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mo. 8. 



AN INTRODUCTION TO THE 

HISTORY OF 

Educational Theories, 

By OSCAR BROWNING, M.A., 

Senior Fellow and Lecturer of King's College, Cambridge, and 
SOMETIME Assistant Master at Eton College. 

ENLARGED EDITION. 

the new features are : 

1. An Analysis of Each Chapter. 3. A Valuation of Froebel. 

2. A Full Index of Subjects. 4. The American Common School. 




New York and Chicago* 

E L KELLOGG & CO 

1 888 



AUTHORITIES CONSULTED. 



The principal authorities used are — 
Schmidt's Gescliichte der Padagogik. Cothen, 1868. 
Schmidt's Encydoplklie des gesammten Erziehungs- und Tin- 

terrichtswesens. Gotha, 1876. 
Essays on Educational Befortners. By R. H. Quick. 
Histoire Gritique des Doctrines de VEducation en France. 

Par Gabriel Compayre. Hachette, 1879. 
Memoirs of Oerman Teachers and Educators. By Henry 

Barnard, Hartford, U.S.A. 
Plidagogische Bibliothek. Eine Sammlung der loichtigsten 

pMagogisclien Schriften dlterer und neuerer Zeit. Julius 

Klonne, Berlin. 
Arnstadt (F. A.), Frangois Rabelais und sein Traite d'Educa- 

tion. Leipsic, 1872. 
Ascham's Scholemaster . Edited by J. L. B, Mayor, with 

Notes. 
Locke's Thoughts on Education. Edited by R. H. Quick. 
Sainte-Beuve's Port-Boyal. 
Maxwell Lyte's Histwy of Eton College. 
The writer has treated some of the subjects contained in this 

book in a lecture delivered before the Royal Institution 

on November 1, 1876, in an article on the " History of 

Education" in the new edition of the Encyclopcedia Bri- 

tannica, and in various articles published in the Journal 

of Education. 

Tliis edition is made to meet the requests of many tea/ih&rs for (1) 
an analysis of subjects; (2) a moi^e complete index; (3) a statement of 
the theory of the American common school. 

Copyright, 1888, by E. L. KELLOGG & CO. 



PREFACE. 



The histoiy of Educational Theories may be of prac- 
tical use to teachers in two ways: it may show what is 
the historical ground for retaining existing practices in 
education or for substituting others; and it may, by 
telling us what great teachers have attempted, and what 
great thinkers have conceived as possible in this depart- 
ment, stimulate us to complete their work^ or to carry 
out their principles under easier conditions. The dead 
hand of spiritual ancestry lays no more sacred duty on 
posterity than that of realizing under happier circum- 
stances ideas which the stress of the age or the shortness 
of life has deprived of their accomplishment. 

The writer has attempted to give an account at once 
popular and accurate of the main lines of thought 
which have been followed upon educational subjects, so 
far as they are important at the present day. He is 
conscious of many omissions and shortcomings in the per- 
formance of his task. His chief qualification has been 
that he was for fifteen years a working schoolmaster. 

Cambridge. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Education among the Greeks — Music and Gymnastic 

Theories of Plato and Aristotle 7 

II. Roman Education — Oratory 26 

III. Humanistic Education 44 

IV. The Realists — Ratich and Comenius 61 

V. The Naturalists — Rabelais and Montaigne .... 80 

VI. English Humanists and Realists — Roger Ascham and 

John Milton 99 

VII. Locke 11^ 

VIII. Jesuits and Jansenists . 135 

IX. Rousseau 152 

X. Pestalozzi 170 

XI. Kant, Fichte, and Herbart ... 186 

XII. The English Public School 202 

XIII. Froebel 320 

XIV. The American Common School 226 

Index of Subjects 233 



At the request of many teachers, two chapters ham been added : 
Froebel, and The American Common School. Neither of 
these subjects can be omitted by the student wlw is attempting to 
gain a knowledge of the History of Education. 

A nery complete index of subjects is given, and imll be found of 
the highest value; ''Education" alone has 30 references. 

There is also an analysis to each chapter. 



HISTORY OF EDUCATIONAL 
THEORIES. 



EDUCATION AMONG THE GREEKS—MUSIC AND 
GYMNASTIC THEORIES OF PLATO AND 
ARISTOTLE,' 

Caution Needed by Students of Education. — To those 
who begin the study of the historical development of 
educational theories some preliminary caution is neces- 
sary. We shall find that education has always been a 
favorite problem with philosophers. Those who have 
wished to reform or to reorganize the world, meeting 
with many difficulties in dealing with the mass of grown- 
up people, have turned their eyes to the more hopeful 
body of ingenuous youth, whose minds are like white 
paper or pliant wax. If only the rising generation can 
be directed in the proper path, the regeneration of the 

^ In tliis chapter I have been under special obligations to Pro- 
fessor A. S. Wilkins's " Essay on National Education in Greece" : 
London, 1873, and to Mr. Nettleship's article on " The Theory of 
Education in the Republic of Plato," contained in "Hellenica" : 
Rivingtons, 1980. 



8 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

human race will be a reality instead of a dream. Ex- 
perience ought by this time to have taught us that these 
hopes are misleading. 

The Limit of Education. — From one point of view 
education can do much^ from another it can do little or 
nothing. A child is born into the world with its facul- 
ties given to it once for all. No power can be put into 
it which is not there already. Its parents and a long 
line of ancestors have determined of what nature it shall 
be. As it grows up, and we fancy that we can fathom 
its capabilities and gauge its strength, we forget the 
countless capacities which lie hidden in the simple 
germ. The diseases and the eccentricities of our an- 
cestors lie in wait for us at every new epoch of our lives. 
We pass as it were down the vista of a spectral avenue 
in which our forefathers stand, ranged in counter lines, 
ready at the proper moment to lay their chilly hand on 
their descendant. Each year of life beats and moulds 
the boy into the likeness of his father. 

Human Beings have Limitations. — Again, youth cannot 
be everything which it promises to be. A choice must be 
made. A large part of the fascination of boyhood lies 
in the uncertainty of its future. A teacher is apt to 
think that his bright pupil may be anything. He shows 
germs of qualities, any one of which — all of which — he 
imagines may come to fruit. Yet it is not so. Distinc- 
tion in one direction can only be obtained by repression 
in another. A strong nature can only be produced by 
lopping and pruning the branches which it sends out 
on all sides into the circumambient air. The human 
powers are limited. The brain has only a definite ca- 
pacity, and to work well it niust be charged with blood. 



EFFECT OF MAN'S ENVIRONMENT, g 

The quantity of blood is limited, and cannot be drawn 
to the brain without being taken from some other part, 
the stomach or the limbs. Emotion, it is true, may be 
transformed into intellect, the force of passion may be 
absorbed by the growing will ; but the physical basis on 
which the senses, the intellect, the will, and the emo- 
tions rest is but a limited quantity for each individual. 

Effect of Man's Environment. — To the teacher who 
has assimilated these important truths there remains 
yet another difficulty, arising from the struggle of man 
with his environment. The teacher does his best to 
develop harmoniously all the faculties of the individual, 
to create a sound body for the sound mind, to take care 
that all the fibres of the brain are called into play and 
roused to full activity, and that their work is properly 
distributed among the inherited capacities of the pupil. 
He will consider his object gained if his pupil has at- 
tained to the best development of which he is capable, 
if no powers have been repressed excepting so far as is 
necessary for the proper activity of others. But suppose 
that this result has been produced, and no teacher can 
boast that he has as yet completely produced it, what 
assurance has he that these qualities will be required by 
the world ? That moves on its way heedless of individ- 
ual exceptions. The perfectly educated man may find 
no place for himself in the economy of things. If we 
murmur at this the world replies, "^ The fault is with 
you ; with all your science you cannot educate as I edu- 
cate." Consider the new industries of the last fifty 
years, what necessities have been created by railwaj^s 
and telegraphs. The skill of a pointsman, an engine - 
driyer, or a telegraphist requires qualities and knowledge 



10 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

which probably did not exist before the present century. 
They have been produced by no school, taught by no 
master. As Persius says, the belly was their teacher, 
the necessity of making a liyelihood formed them into 
these moulds. So, then, we have this antagonism be- 
tween the individual and the world. The individual 
requires something for the full satisfaction of his being; 
the world requires something else, and will have it. 
What are we to do ? Are we to give the highest educa- 
tion possible irrespective of practical needs, or are we to 
give up education altogether, and let the world do what 
it will with its own ? This is the first great problem 
which meets us at the threshold of the subject. Savage 
tribes solve the question by adopting, uncompromisingly, 
the practical view. An Australian or a Zulu is trained 
for the immediate ends of existence. To be a keen 
hunter or a successful warrior is the first necessity of his 
life, and tradition has built np a scheme of education to 
suit these ends. 

The Greeks First to Educate. — We will pass over the 
earlier forms of education — the Chinese, the Indian, the 
Egyptian, and the Jewish. Little is known about any 
of them except the Jewish, not enough to make them 
practically valuable to ourselves. On the other hand, 
the principles of the Greek education cannot be omitted. 
The Greeks were the first to teach education as a science; 
the results which they produced were admirable. We 
have a full account both of their ordinary practice and 
of the ideal schemes sketched by Plato and Aristotle ; 
while their system of education is exercising a consider- 
able effect upon the world at the present day. We can- 
not understand the history of education since the Re- 



SUBJECTS TA UGHT B V THE GREEKS. 1 1 

naissance unless we make ourselves acquainted with the 
Greek and Roman traditions which so profoundly affect- 
ed Europe at the revival of learning. 

Subjects Taught by the Greeks. — Until the time of 
Alexander the main subjects of education among the 
Greeks were music and gymnastics, that is, bodily tri:in- 
ing and mental culture, music {^jxovgiktj) or the science 
of the muses, being divided into the preliminary train- 
ing of grammar, and music properly so called. At a 
late period more subjects were introduced, and that 
series of studies came into use which was known as 
eyKVKkiot Ttaideia, or '' encyclopaedia," '' orbis doc- 
trinae," as Seneca calls it. This was composed of the 
seven arts : grammar, rhetoric, philosophy or dialectic, 
arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy, which, 
continuing through the Roman period, lasted under the 
name of Trivium and Quadi^ivium until the close of the 
Middle Ages. Not much was taught until the seventh 
year, and the earliest teaching was by myths. The 
Greek day began very early, indeed with sunrise ; it was 
interrupted between ten and twelve by the business of 
the market-place, and the remaining hours were spoken 
of as afternoon and evening. Boys went to school in 
the early morning, and a second time after breakfast. 
They were accompanied through the streets by the 
TtaidayGDyo^, a faithful slave who had charge of their 
moral supervision. The literary teaching was followed 
by athletics, the palaestra by the bath. Six hours a day 
was regarded both by Greeks and Romans as the proper 
limit of study. There were occasional holidays, and the 
hot time of the year was given up to vacation, as is still 
the practice in many countries. 



12 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

Letters, Reading, Writing, Numbers, etc. — The first 
duty of a Greek boy was to learn his letters. This was 
coincident with learning to swim, so that *^one who 
knows neither swimming nor his letters^' was the Greek 
term for an ignoramus. The methods of teaching were 
very similar to our own ; there was the same difficulty 
of giving the letters a name differing from their power 
in sound, the same attempts at shortening labor and 
making learning easy and without tears. The sophists 
invented methods of compendious instruction, and the 
alphabetical tragedy of Oallias, which has sometimes 
been regarded as a satire upon them, is more probably 
an attempt to teach letters in play. A Greek child had 
undoubtedly an advantage over us in school books ; we 
have nothing to compare with the grace, beauty, and 
fun of the Odyssee. Full of charm as it is to an Eng- 
lish boy or girl, it must have been far more so to those 
who breathed the same pure air and gazed on the same 
blue sea as its hero and its author. 

Reading was taught with the greatest pains, the ut- 
most care was taken with the intonation of the voice, 
and the articulation of the throat. We have lost the 
power of distinguishing between accent and quantity. 
The Greeks did not acquire it without long and anxious 
training of the ear and the vocal organs. This was the 
duty of the plionascus. Homer was the common study 
of all Greeks. The Iliad and Odyssee were at once the 
Bible, the Shakespeare, the Robinson Crusoe, and the 
Arabian Nights of the Hellenic race. Long passages 
and indeed whole books were learned by heart. The 
Greek, as a rule, learned no language but his own. 

Next to reading and repetition came writing, which 



ATHLETICS. 1 3 



was carefully taught. Composition naturally followed, 
and the burden of correcting exercises, which still weighs 
down the backs of schoolmasters, dates from these early 
times. 

Closely connected with reading and writing is the art 
of reckoning, and the science of numbers leads us easily 
to music. Plato considered arithmetic as the best spur 
to a sleepy and uninstructed spirit ; we see from the 
Platonic dialogues how mathematical problems employed 
the mind and thoughts of young Athenians. Many of 
the more difficult arithmetical operations were solved by 
geometrical methods, but the Greeks carried the art of 
teaching numbers to considerable refinement. They 
used the abacus, and had an elaborate method of finger 
reckoning, which was serviceable up to 10,000. Draw- 
ing was the crowning accomplishment to this vestibule 
of training. 

Athletics. — By the time the fourteenth year was com- 
pleted, the Creek boy would have begun to devote him- 
self seriously to the practice of athletics. The ardor 
shown in their pursuit by the Creeks and Romans is 
often used as an argument for our exaggerated devotion 
to them at the present day. There is no doubt that by 
this double attention to the welfare of mind and body, 
the Creeks became the most beautiful as well as the 
most gifted of mankind. But it is a question whether 
in our modern race after cups and colors we are follow- 
ing the Creeks at all, and not rather the factions of the 
Roman circus and the corruption of the lower Empire. 
Much as the Creeks prized athletic distinction, they held 
professional athletes in very little honor. They would 
have regarded with contempt a gentleman who thought 



14 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

it a desirable object in life to be a prize-fighter, a game- 
keeper, or a coachman. The antagonism between work 
and games was a practical difficulty to them as it is to 
us. It was indeed in the palagstra that Socrates found 
his readiest hearers and dispensed his abstrusest lore. 
Can we imagine a dialogue such as the Theaetetus being 
held in an English cricket-ground, with the players 
waiting for their innings ? But Euripides denounces 
the race of athletes in strong language, and there are 
other signs that in his time the danger of their excessive 
cultivation was being recognized. The enthusiasm shown 
by Homer and Pindar for bodily strength had become 
weaker in the days of Pericles. The Greeks did not 
think, as we are apt to do, that athletics are the best 
guarantee for manliness of character and the best safe- 
guard against effeminacy. They knew that the mind 
and body cannot be profitably exercised at the same 
time, and that the mind and not the body is the seat of 
the higher aspirations. The Spartans, whose name has 
become proverbial for hardiness, were regarded by the 
Athenians as brutalized by their training. 

Music. — As gymnastics was intended to harmonize the 
powers of the body, so music was to order and to regu- 
late the soul. It is difficult to understand what the 
Greeks meant by music. If we could fully realize this 
we should have made their system of education as clear 
to us as our own. In one sense music is equivalent to 
culture, to the whole range of studies which soften and 
refine the mind and character. In another sense it is 
undoubtedly the same as what we mean by music. Greek 
music differed from our own in not being polyphonic. 
The Greeks would not have understood or have appreci- 



EFFECT OF MUSICAL TRAINING. t^ 

afced the various instruments, and the mingled effects of 
an orchestra. They were accustomed to hear only one 
instrument at a time, or at the most an instrument ac- 
companying the voice. But, on the other hand, the 
Greek had a clearer perception of the divisions of the 
scale. A Greek who could not distinguish between 
semi-tones, or even between quarter-tones, would have 
been thought as ignorant as a classical scholar who 
quoted Homer with a false quantity. Also they were 
far more sensitive than laymen usually are among our- 
selves to the essential characteristics of different keys. 
We have abundant evidence that every Greek boy was 
carefully trained in the theory and practice of the 
musical art, and that it was regarded by masters of all 
schools as of the first importance to intellect and moral- 
ity. Plato, Aristotle, and Aristophanes agree in this. 
Music was not only the gymnastic of the ear and the 
voice, but of the spirit, and the foundation of all the 
higher life. Its rhythm and harmony penetrated into 
the soul and worked powerfully upon it. In union with 
poetry it led the soul to virtue and inspired it with 
courage. It has been well said that if a Greek youth 
had by continuous4)ractice become stronger than a bull, 
more truthful than the Godhead, and wiser than the 
most learned Egyptian priest, his fellow-citizens would 
shrug their shoulders at him with contempt if he did 
not possess what a series of music and gymnastics can 
alone give—a sense of gracefulness and proportion. 

Effect of Musical Training. — This careful musical 
training might have been expected by a Greek to do that 
service for the mind which in later days has been at- 
tributed with much less reason to accurate scholarship. 



l6 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

The development of a sense of harmony, the using 
of the mind to decide on subtle questions by the 
delicate judgment of taste rather than by the coarser 
balances of reason and argument — all this might be 
expected to proceed from the nice appreciation of the 
character of sounds, and of the ethical effect of melo- 
dies. Plato in his ^^ Republic^' defends the power of 
music, '^because rhythm and harmony find their way 
into the secret places of the soul, on which they 
mightily fasten, bearing grace in their movements, and 
making the soul graceful of him who is rightly edu- 
cated, or ungraceful if ill-educated ; and also because he 
who has received this true education of the inner being 
will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art or 
nature, and with a true taste, while he praises, and re- 
joices over, and receives into his soul the good, and be- 
comes noble and good, he will justly blame and hate the 
bad now in the days of his youth, even before he is able 
to know the reason of the thing ; and when reason 
comes he will recognize and salute her as a friend with 
whom his education has made him long familiar." 
(^^Rep." iii. 401-2, Jowett's Translation.) Nothing 
shows the importance which the Greeks attached to 
music more than their strong condemnation of the flute 
as compared with the lyre. The one was the basis of 
true wisdom and morality, the other the instrument of 
general laxity and corruption. It would be difficult for 
the most ardent defender of classics to condemn in 
stronger language the shallowness and superficiality of 
"modern sides." The influence of music was developed 
still further by the practice of singing and dancing. 
Plato on Education. — Bearing in mind these general 



PLATO'S PLAN. I7 



principles of Greek education, it will be more easy 
for us to follow the training which Plato prescribes 
for his ideal state. According to him education is 
nurture (rpocprj). It is very powerful, it can determine 
whether a nature shall be wild and malevolent, or 
rich with benefits to mankind. But it includes not 
merely instruction or training, but all the influences 
which are brought to bear upon the soul. We must ap- 
proach the problem with a psychological analysis. The 
soul is made up of three parts: 1, the appetite {enidv- 
fJiia), which is wild but capable of being tamed; 2, the 
spirit {Ou^ioz), the element of courage, which may be 
enlisted on the side either of good or evil; 3, the philo- 
sophic element, the source of gentleness, of sociability, 
of love, of refinement, of culture, and of wisdom. Now 
the duty of education is to control the appetite, and so 
to balance the other elements of the soul that each may 
tend to the perfection of the other. If the philosophic 
side of the soul is too much encouraged its gentleness 
may become effeminacy, its sensitiveness irritability, its 
simple love be changeci into feverish desire. On the 
other hand the exaggerated practice of athletics will 
swallow up the intellect, courage will become brutality, 
and high spirit insolence. The business of education is 
to reconcile these two elements in harmonious propor- 
tion. 

Plato's Plan. — Plato finds in the State the same ele- 
ments that he discovers in the individual. The State 
was merely the citizen writ large. Philosophers repre- 
sented the wisdom of the State, warriors its courage, 
the mob its passions, which were to be kept under due 
control. In the harmony of these various members 



1 8 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 



lies justice, the goal and object of its constitution. All 
education is to be controlled by the State. Even 
marriages are to be directed by it. Children are to 
remain in the family till the end of the sixth year, 
but even then their nurture and direction is carefully 
prescribed. They are to be taught morality by myths 
and tales. Plato considers the cardinal virtues of con- 
duct to be: honor to parents, love of fellow-citizens, 
courage, truthfulness, self-control ; ^ and he evidently 
considers the education of character to be more impor- 
tant than the usual rudiments of technical education, 
reading, writing, and arithmetic. From the seventh 
year the child belongs to the State. Till the tenth year 
the training is to be principally in gymnastic, which is, 
however, to be continued through the whole life. 
From the tenth to the thirteenth year the child is 
taught to read and write ; from the fourteenth to the 
sixteenth he learns poetry and music. 

Plato concerning Music. — Plato's sense of the im- 
portance of music has been already mentioned, but we 
may here emphasize the close connection which he 
sees between it and the stability of order in the State. 
^^The introduction of a new kind of music, ^' he says, 
^^must be shunned as imperilling the whole State, 
since styles of music are never disturbed without af- 
fecting the most important political institutions." 
'''It is here in music that our guardians should 
erect their guard-house, for it is here that lawlessness 
easily creeps in unawares, in the guise of amusement 
and professing to do no mischief. Gradually gaining a 

' Hellenica/'p. 97. 



PLATO CONCERNING ATHLETICS. I9 

lodgment, it qnie|ly insinuates itself into manners and 
customs. From thence it issues in greater force and 
makes its way into mutual compacts ; from compacts it 
goes on to attack laws and constitutions, displaying the 
utmost impudence until it ends by overturning every- 
thing, both in public and in private." 

Plato concerning Athletics. — Plato wishes that the 
years from seventeen to twenty shall be devoted mainly 
to athletics as a preparation for the art of war. But he 
carefully distinguishes between the gymnastic training 
of the professional athlete and that of the free-born citi- 
zen. ^'^The habit of body cultivated by trained fighters 
in the palaestra is a sleepy kind of regimen, and produces 
a precarious state of health. Do you not observe that 
men in regular training sleep their life away, and if 
they depart only slightly from the prescribed diet are 
attacked by serious maladies in their worst form? A 
better conceived regimen is required for our athletes of 
war, who must be wakeful like watch dogs, and possess 
the utmost quickness both of eye and ear : and who are 
so exposed when on service to variations in the water 
they drink, and in the rest of their food, also vicissi- 
tudes of sultry heats and wintry storms, that it will not 
do for them to be of precarious health. The best gym- 
nastic will be sister to the music we described a little 
while ago, a simple moderate system, especially that as- 
signed to our fighting men.^^ 

Plato concerning Dialectics.— At the age of twenty 
men are to be chosen for their different employments ; 
the next ten years they are to devote to the study of 
the sciences coupled with military service, and the for 
mation of the character by practical life ; the following 



20 EDUCA TIONAL THEORIES. 

five years are to be entirely devoted to dialectic. Of this 
it is difficult to give an account without going more 
deeply into the Platonic philosophy than would suit our 
purpose. '^ It lies/^ Plato saj^s, ^^ like a coping stone 
upon the top of the sciences. It is the queen science 
which holds the key of all the rest. It carries back its 
hypotheses to the very first principle of all in order to 
establish them firmly. Finding the eye of the soul ab- 
solutely buried in a swamp of barbarous ignorance^ it 
gently draAvs and raises it upward, employing as hand- 
maids in this work of revolution the arts which we have 
discussed." The dialectian is he who takes thoughtful 
account of the essence of each thing. As far as a person 
has no just account to give to himself and to others, so 
far he fails to exercise pure reason on the subject." 
'^Unless a person can strictly define by a process of 
thought the essential form of the good, abstracted from 
everything else ; and unless he can fight his way as it 
were through all objections, studying to disprove them, 
not by the rules of opinion but by those of real existence, 
and unless in all these conflicts he travels to his conclu- 
sion without making one false step in his train of 
thought, unless he does all this, shall you not assert that 
lie knows not the essence of good, nor any other good 
thing, and that any phantom of it which he may chance 
to apprehend is tlie fruit of opinion and not of science, 
and that he dreams and sleeps away his present life, and 
never wakes on this side of that future world in which 
he is doomed to sleep forever." 

Plato's Plan for the Citizen. — The fifteen years of 
training in sciences and dialectics are to be followed, in 
Plato's scheme, by fifteen more years of public service. 



ARISTOTLE MORE PRACTICAL THAN PLATO. 21 

To use the words of Mr. Nettleship/ ''Not till he has 
passed through this trial, and shown himself foremost 
both in action and knowledge, is he to be made ' to turn 
the eye of his soul upward, and look on the very good it- 
self which is the universal source of light/ Then at 
last the world will be open before his mind, ordered and 
intelligible, connected and pervaded by a single princi- 
ple, which he can trace in many forms and combinations, 
but can distinguish from them all. Then the shadows 
and images of everyday life will acquire their true mean- 
ing, for he will see through them and over them to the 
realities which they reflect. The isolated and self-con- 
tradictory maxims of popular morality will interpret 
themselves into fragments of a single perfection which 
human life suggests although it does not realize it. The 
separate sciences will cease to talk ' in dreams,' and will 
point beyond themselves to the waking vision of an ab- 
solute being. Philosophy will be not a cunning device 
of words or an occupation for a listless hour, but the 
articulate language of truth which a lifetime is too short 
for learning. Only eternity can interpret that language 
fully, but to understand it is the nearest approach to 
heaven on earth, and to study it is true education. '^ 

Aristotle more Practical than Plato. — There are im- 
portant differences between the teaching of Aristotle and 
that of Plato. Aristotle was before everything a scientific 
and practical inquirer.'' Instead of considering, as Plato 
did, ideas as the only real existences which underlie phe- 

1 "Hellenica/'p. 179. 

2 Aristotle's views on education are found in the "Ethics " and 
"Politics." There is some difference in the views expressed in 
the two books. 



22 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

nomena, he regarded them as abstractions from phenom- 
ena. Men, he said, have souls, and there are traces of 
souls in animals, but men have reason, which animals 
have not. This reason is partly active and partly pas- 
sive, and is to some extent subordinate to the lower ap- 
petites. Now the highest object of man is the attain- 
ment of happiness, and the highest happiness of man is 
to be reached by perfect virtue. The highest virtue is 
that of the reason. This is realized in the life of con- 
templation, which is higher than the life of action. We 
cannot as mortal men attain to it, but in proportion as 
we do attain to it so do we become divine. The end of 
life, and therefore of education, is the attainment at 
once of intellectual and of moral virtue, which bring 
with them the truest pleasures of which man is ca]3able. 
The means of obtaining this are three — nature, habit, 
and instruction. In education, then, which presumes 
natural gifts on which to work, habit must come first, 
tnstruction second. The semi-rational part of our nature 
develops before the reasoning part ; the body develops 
before both. Therefore the order of education must be 
— 1, bodily ; 2, moral ; 3, scientific. Of bodily occupa- 
tions Aristotle carefully excludes those which are fit only 
for craftsmen or slaves. The city states for which he wrote 
were in fact aristocracies, resting on what Curtius calls 
a "broad and convenient basis of personal servitude.*' 
First then in education will come gymnastics, but this is 
not intended to make men athletes, to develop mere 
brute force, but to produce courage, which is a mean be- 
tween the unbridled wildness of the animal and the slug- 
gishness of the coward. Too much weight must not be 
gijen to athletics lest the child be spoiled, and body and 



ARISTOTLE MORE PRACTICAL THAN PLATO. 23 

mind must not be hard- worked at the same time. Gym- 
nastics are only regarded as a preparation for the educa- 
tion of the soul. This is done by music. But here also 
we must have moderation. The student must not de- 
generate into an artist. An artist practises music not 
for his own perfection but to give pleasure, and that not 
always of the highest kind. Music in general education 
is always to be used for one of three purposes: either for 
education proper, or for the training of the affections, or 
for the rational employment of leisure. And it will be 
found that different kinds of melodies have very different 
effects in these respects. Next to music comes the art 
of drawing, which will encourage and develop a sense of 
the beautiful. Next is mathematics, which is purely in- 
tellectual and has no effect on the moral nature. Dia- 
lectic is the foundation of scientific training. Its use is 
of three kinds : 1, as a gymnastic of the mind ; 2, as a 
means of intercourse with others for the purpose of per- 
suading them ; 3, for the learning of philosophic sci- 
ences, so as more readily to distinguish between what is 
true and Avhat is false. It leads the way to higher spec- 
ulation, and helps to the knowledge of each separate de- 
tail. Connected with dialectic is rhetoric, the object of 
which is not to persuade but to know in each case what is 
useful for the obtaining of credit and belief. Philosophy, 
according to Aristotle, has for its object the knowledge 
of the first cause, and by this we learn to know every- 
thing else. The highest of the practical sciences is poli- 
tics, which has for its object the attainment of the high- 
est good — that is, happiness in the State. It requires a 
deep moral nature for its pursuit, and therefore is not 
suited for the study of youth. 



EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 



Greek Education Effective. — Such is a general sketch 
of Greek education both from its practical and its ideal 
side. There is much in it that may be useful to our- 
selves, but much is omitted to which we attach great 
importance. There is no learning of languages, no 
arrangements are made for instruction in Persian, Latin, 
Phoenician, or Egyptian. There is no history in the 
curriculum, unless we class legends under this head. 
The Greeks did not, like the Jews and other eastern 
nations, give to their own history the sanctity of a 
religion, and keep it continually before their eyes and 
ears. We must never forget that the society of Gre ce 
was a society served by slaves, and also that it was de- 
veloped in city states in which every one was known by 
every one else, and which might not exceed a number 
which could be conveniently addressed by a single 
person. In its control of personal freedom by public 
opinion a Greek State resembled the Geneva of Calvin, 
or the Boston of the Puiritans, and still more the city 
republics of Italy in the Middle Ages. No wonder that 
Greek learning spread so rapidly among men, who read 
in it the apotheosis of a society which had so many 
analogies with what they saw around them. An educa- 
tion such as I have described produced the most gifted 
and attractive nation that ever lived upon the earth. 
Whether we would understand the course which Euro- 
pean culture has taken, or the strongest influences which 
underlie the daily life of modern Europe, we must recur 
again and again to the head-spring of Hellenic thought. 



ANALYSIS. 25 



ANALYSIS OF CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Caution needed by Students of Education 7 

The Limit of Education . 8 

Human Beings have their Limitations .... ... 8 

Effect of Environment 9 

The Greeks First to educate 10 

Subjects taught by the Greeks 11 

Letters, Reading, Writing, etc 12 

Athletics 13 

Music 14 

Effect of Musical Training . . . . , 15 

Plato on Education 16 

Plato's Plan 17 

Plato concerning Music . • 18 

Athletics 19 

Dialectics 19 

Plato's Plan lor the Citizen 20 

Aristotle more Practical than Plato ... 21 

Greek Education effective 24 



26 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 



ROMAN EDUCA TION-ORA TOR Y. 

Eoman Ideas. — In passing from Greece to Rome we 
find a new ideal of the perfection of man. Hellenism, 
the most important factor in our modern civilization, is 
almost synonymous with our modern conception of cul- 
ture. Eome has left us but one intellectual product, a 
system of organized and carefully developed law ; but 
Roman law was the natural outcome of her national life 
as the ruler and civilizer of the world. The object of 
Greek education was to foster to its highest development 
the inner life of man, to form the philosopher who 
should "guide the man of action. Roman education 
aimed at no higher object than to mould the man of 
action himself, to make a citizen fit, in the language of 
Milton, to "perform justly, skilfully, and magnani- 
mously, all the offices, both public and private, of peace 
and war." At a later period, when Greece had taken her 
conqueror captive, when Cicero spent the leisure of his 
retirement in writing philosophical primers for the use 
of his countrymen, when a knowledge of Greek was a 
necessity of good education, and when Rome was filled, 
as Europe was at a later period, with hungry professors 
of Hellenic learning, this practical training took a more 
intellectual shape, and became crystallized into oratory. 
The treatises of Cicero, of Seneca, of Quintilian, on the 



EFFECT ON FRANCE AND ENGLAND. 2/ 

education of the orator, are disquisitions on the training 
of the perfect man. 

Effect on France and England. — Roman education in 
its two aspects has profoundly affected two of the great- 
est nations of the modern world, the English and the 
French. The purest type of the English Whig, fond of 
freedom, but fonder of his order, inspired with a tradi- 
tional respect for learning and learned men, educated at 
a public school and a university, writing Latin verses in 
his leisure hours, reflecting with subjective intensity on 
the bearing in success and failure which best becomes a 
public man, resembles no body of men so closely as 
Cicero and his correspondents ; while France, so long 
the home of the imperial schools of rhetoric, when they 
had perished elsewhere, has steeped her language in the 
later Roman eloquence. The Greek and Roman ideals 
are the complement of each t>ther. 

The Greek Ideal.— On the one side, man beautiful, 
active, clever, receptive, emotional; quick to feel and to 
show his feeling, to argue, to refine; greedy of the 
pleasures of the world, if a little neglectful of its duties; 
fearing restraint as an unjust stinting of the bounty of 
nature ; inquiring into every secret ; strongly attached 
to the things of this life, but elevated by an unabated 
striving after the highest ideal ; setting no value but on 
faultless abstractions, and seeing reality only in heaven, 
on earth mere shadows, phantoms, and copies of the un- 
seen. 

The Roman Ideal. — On the other side, man practical, 
energetic, eloquent, tinged but not imbued with phi- 
losophy ; trained to spare neither himself nor others ; 
reading and thinking only with an apology; best engaged 



28 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

in defending a political principle, in maintaining with 
grayity and solemnity the conservation of ancient free- 
dom, in leading armies through unexplored deserts, 
establishing roads, fortresses, settlements, as the results 
of conquest, or in ordering and superintending the slow, 
certain, and utter annihilation of some enemy of Rome. 
Has the Christian world ever surpassed these types ? 
Can we produce anything by education in modern times 
except by combining, blending, and modifying the 
self-culture of the Greek and the self-sacrifice of the 
Roman ? 

Beginnings. — One of the chief characteristics of Ro- 
man education was the influence of the mother. The 
Roman wife was the worthy companion of her husband, 
and she was often the best stimulus and example to her 
sons. In early times, before the development of regular 
schools, children were prepared for future life by the 
society of their fathers. They sat with them at table 
and heard, in decent and respectful silence, of the sar- 
vices which their elders had rendered to the State ; they 
accompanied them to the Senate, and learned how to 
hold their tongue while others were talking ; and how 
to speak when the proper occasion should arrive. As 
wealth and luxury increased, the home became less 
secure as a training-place for youth. The pcedagogus 
was borrowed from Greece, but he was held in high 
honor, and though a slave, was intrusted with the moral 
and intellectual education of his charge. In the school 
the rod was freely used. The severity of Orbilius was 
no exception to the general rule. There was a short 
holiday of five days at the Quinquatrian feast of Mi- 
nerva, answering to our Easter, and at the Saturnalia, 



AT SCHOOL— PRIMARY. 29 

answering to our Christmas ; but during the summer 
months school was altogether suspended. The boys 
were absent from Eome in the unhealthy season, or were 
engaged in their duties on the soil. 

At School— Primary. — At the age of seven the child 
was committed to the grammaUstes, or literator, to learn 
the first elenients of reading and writing. Horace tells 
us how the lads went through the streets of Rome with 
their slate and satchel on their arm, carrying the mas- 
ter's fee carefully on the middle day of the eight months 
during which they went to school. Heading was taught 
by the syllabic method, that is, by explaining the power 
of the letters in combination before their individual 
-characteristics, a method to which Quintilian was op- 
posed. Writing was taught by inscribing a copy on a 
waxen tablet, and allowing the pupil to follow the fur- 
row of the letters with the stylus. Then followed the 
proper pronunciation and accent of the words. Selected 
passages were learned by heart. By degrees the easier 
poets were read and explained, great pains being always 
taken with the exact pronunciation. Next to reading 
and writing came reckoning. The fingers were made 
great use of. Each joint and bend of the finger was 
made to signify a certain value, and the pupil was ex- 
pected to follow the twinkling motion of the teacher's 
hands as he represented number after number. The 
modern Italian game of mora is a survival of this capac- 
ity. The abacus of stones for reckoning was also largely 
employed. 

Advanced Studies. — This preliminary training lasted 
from the seventh to the twelfth year. The children were 
then handed over to the grammaticus or literahis. The 



30 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

study of Greek was now added to that of Latin, etymol- 
ogy was taught, probably a very false one, and the rules 
of syntax and composition. The explanation of the 
poets was used for the formation of moral principle — 
Livius Andronicus in Latin, the Odyssee of Homer in 
Greek. Vergil, Cicero, and ^sop were studied in 
those days as in our own. Orthography and grammar 
were carefully inculcated ; whole poems and orations 
were learned by heart. Nor was history neglected. 
Atticus, the friend of Cicero, was so well acquainted 
with Eoman history, that he knew the laws, the treaties, 
and the momentous events which formed the fabric 
of his country^s annals. The storied past filled him 
with traditions of the inheritance of duty of each noble 
stock. The first steps were made toward the prac- 
tice of eloquence. As the literator had prepared the 
way for the grammaticus, so the grammaticus smoothed 
the path for the rhetor. At the age of fifteen or sixteen 
the young Eoman assumed the dress of manhood. He 
was no longer treated as a child, and kept in strict disci- 
pline with stripes. He now chose his profession, either 
the life of a country gentleman devoted to the patriotic 
duty of agriculture, or the army, or the senate, or the 
forum, or that complex of pursuits to which the noble 
Roman was called by virtue of his birth. 

Rhetoric. — The training in the first three are beyond 
our purpose, but forensic education held a position of 
gradually increasing importance, and at last absorbed 
into itself the whole of Eoman instruction. Ehetoric was 
to Eoman education what music was to Greek. Both 
terms are hard for us to understand now that we have 
learned to use them with such different meanings. No 



CATO ON EDUCATION. 3 1 

learning was valued by the Romans unless it was seen to 
have a practical purpose. Philosophy was regarded 
rather as a danger than as a help. Tacitus says of 
Agricola, '^ retinuit quod est difficillimum ex philosophia 
modum/^ "He succeeded in the most difficult exercise 
of self-command, he devoted himself to the study of 
philosophy, and yet rescued from its influence the qual- 
ities of a man of action.'^ Those who labored for the 
spiritual development of their fellow-countrymen saw 
that rhetoric might be made to include almost every 
branch of intellectual activity. Presented under this 
guise it might be accepted by the Romans, when in the 
simple nakedness of art or philosophy it was certain to 
be refused. The first special school for Italian rhetoric 
was opened by Lucius Plotius Gallus in the year 90 B.C. 
Cicero and the men of his time gave themselves unend- 
ing trouble to acquire the facility by which they gained 
their reputation. It is scarcely to be wondered if cen- 
sors, as the guardians of public morals, showed some 
anxiety at the introduction and the spread of this new 
learning. 

Cato on Education. — The theoretical writers of this 
earlier stage of Roman education were Cato the Censor 
and Cicero, and it will be well to give a short account 
of the opinions they have left us on the subject. Quin- 
tilian tells us that Cato (235-149 B.C.) was the first 
Roman writer on education. His treatise is unfortu- 
nately lost, but we may infer its contents from other 
sources. Cato was a strong Conservative. He was the 
champion of the '^'^good old times '^ of Roman simplicity. 
He valued the reputation of a good husband and father 
above that of a good senator. He kept strict discipline 



32 EDVCATiONAL TnEORIlL^. 

in his house. His sons were brought up in the rude 
activity of outdoor life. At the same time he taught 
them the great deeds of their country's history, and pre- 
served with the strictest purity the reverence which is 
due to the young. The foundation of an orator must, 
he said, be laid in character. He recommended a coun- 
try life as the parent of brave soldiers and sturdy citizens. 
He opposed with all his might the new Greek learning, 
and saw in it the coming destruction of the State. 
*^ Believe me," he wrote to his son as if a soothsayer 
had said it, *' that the Greeks are a good-for-nothing 
and unimprovable race. If they disseminate their liter- 
ature among us it will destroy everything; but, still 
worse, if they send their doctors among us, for they 
have bound themselves by a solemn oath to kill the bar- 
barians and the Eomans.^' He himself learned Greek 
late in life, but this did not change his opinions. A 
liomo elegaiiR, "a man of culture," was his abhorrence. 
Practical activity is the whole duty of man. His nature 
rusts like iron if it is not used. 

Cicero on Education. — Very different were the princi- 
ples of Cicero, who stands, whatever we may think of 
his character, as the first fruit of the union of Greek 
and Roman thought and learning. What he tells us 
about education has principal reference to the education 
of the orator, and there is this inconvenience in his re- 
marks, that we cannot tell when he is expressing his 
own opinions and when he is merely translating the 
commonplaces of some Greek philosopher. The aim of 
education is the perfection of the individual. If all cit- 
izens are developed to the highest level of their powers, 
how blessed will be the State that contains them ! The 



CICERO ON- EDUCATiOJV. 33 

teacher is to temper severity with mildness. He is to be 
equal in his punishment, and never speak or strike in 
anger. Eeligion is of the highest importance. The 
gods are the masters and directors of human affairs. 
Education is to begin with the earliest childhood. AYe 
must turn to account the games of children, and be 
particularly careful of the company by which they are 
surrounded. We must take great pains to develop their 
memory, and for this purpose passages of Greek and 
Eoman writers are to be learned by heart. We shall 
find systems of artificial memory useful, in which the 
sight is made to assist the faculty of the brain. In 
choosing a profession the young man is to follow the 
guidance of his nature after he has carefully proved his 
powers and capacities. We must protect him against 
the destructive attacks of the passions ; and if he is des- 
tined for public life we must feed his ambition and love 
of distinction. The orator, whose education Cicero 
minutely describes, must not be, gifted merely with 
readiness of tongue and fluency of speech, nor with the 
natural gifts of stature, presence, and melody of voice. 
We should find in him the acuteness of a dialectician, 
the thought of a philosopher, the expression of a poet, 
the gesticulation of a great actor. Therefore nothing is 
less common than a consummate orator. Education 
can only develop innate and natural gifts. Exuberance 
in the young is better than poverty. The future orator 
must practise himself in extempore speaking, he must 
be accustomed to write down the thoughts which occur 
to him in their first clearness and precision, and after- 
ward polish them with proper copiousness and harmony. 
He will from boyhood have made himself familiar with 



34 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

the best models, so that when he is placed under a mas- 
ter he shall almost be fit to walk alone. Besides this 
careful cultivation of natural gifts, he must acquire an 
amount of knowledge in many different fields. He 
must be at home in jurisprudence, history, and philoso- 
phy. The contemplation of great models must keep a 
high standard ever before his eyes. How can he be a 
statesman if he is ignorant of the history of his country! 
But philosophy is the crown of all. It is the school of 
virtue. Cicero knew that he was here recommending 
what few of his readers had studied so carefully as him- 
self. Last of all, the study of Greek is of the highest 
importance. Cicero took care that his sons should prac- 
tise not only philosophy but eloquence, under Greek 
masters. He cared little for natural science, and was 
supremely ignorant of it, but he followed his Greek 
masters in regarding politics as the queen of sciences, 
that to which all others tended. But it was a study for 
the ripe and mature spirit, and not for youth. Cicero 
forbore to inculcate the Greek practice of gymnastics. 
He was not ignorant of their darker side as the fosterers 
of immorality. Such was the ideal which Cicero placed 
before himself; a compromise, as we might have ex- 
pected, between old and new — the Roman training mel- 
lowed and illumined by the higher knowledge of which 
he had himself tasted. 

Uuintilian. — Let us now see how this fusion of two 
ideals reached the perfection of system in the teaching 
of Quintilian. Roman education became fully organized 
with the centralization of the empire. Like the govern- 
ment, of which it formed a part, it reached its highest 
excellence under Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines. 



QUINTILlAirs PLAN, 35 

Nerva ordered the children of poor parents to be edu- 
cated throughout Italy without expense, and Antoninus 
Pius erected ni honor of his wife Faustina an educational 
institute for poor girls. The education given by the 
literati began to mould jtself into the seven hberal arts, 
which lasted throughout the Middle Ages, as the subject 
of education — the trivium and quadrivium, grammar, 
dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and 
music. In the work of Quintilian on the education of 
an orator, we have a full account of Koman education at 
this period. Qumtilian was born 42 a.d., at Calahorra 
m Spain. He came to Kome at an early age, and was 
educated to be a consummate speaker. He afterward 
exchanged the practice for the teaching of his profession, 
and for twenty years educated the most distinguished 
Eomans in his art. He received from the Emperor the 
broad purple stripe of senatorial dignity, and was raised 
to consular rank. He was the first teacher who was paid 
by the State, and had the title of Professor of Eloquence. 
His treatise was written after his retirement from active 
life. Although it professes to treat merely of the educa- 
tion of the orator, yet it deals incidentally v/itli most of 
the questions which refer to the education of the perfect 
m^n. 

His Plan. — Quintilian begins by a plea for the teach- 
ableness of youth in general. Activity of mind, he says, 
is natural in man, and if the fair promise of youth is often 
not fulfilled, it must be attributed rather to defective 
education than to want of natural power. We must be 
full of hope for the future of every child, and our care 
must begin at the very earliest age. So we must be care- 
ful as to the nurses we provide for our children. Their 



l6 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

words are doubtless important, but so is tlieir pronuncia- 
tion. By the defective instruction of a provincial nurse, 
faults may be acquired in early childhood which can never 
be eradicated. Also the foster children among whom 
your son is to be educated must have the same qualities. 
It is well if you can get for your son a pcedagogus who is 
a man of learning, but if this is impossible, let him at 
least know that he is ignorant, and not be puif ed up with 
the pretence of knowledge which he does not possess. 
It is the duty of the pcedagogus to correct the faults of 
the nurse. Greek should be taught before Latin — one is 
a subject of teaching, the other of insensible acquisition. 
But Latin must follow at a' short interval or else foreign 
pronunciation and foreign idioms will mar the purity of 
the mother tongue. There is no reason for deferring 
instruction for the first seven years of life. The memory 
is most tenacious in early childhood, and it is unreason- 
able not to make use of it while we have it. But this 
must be done with tenderness and sympathy. Learning 
must be a pleasure and not a burden. If the child is not 
disposed for one kind of study, try him with another. 
A teacher of the highest genius is not wanted in teaching 
the rudiments to a child. Let us begin with reading. 
First teach the forms of the separate letters so that the 
child may know them when he sees them. This is pref- 
erable to beginning with the order of the alphabet, or 
with syllabic sounds. Ivory letters will be found useful 
helps. Writing is best taught by cutting the letters on 
a board, and letting the child draw his stylus along the 
grooves. This is preferable to wax, or to having his hand 
directed by another person. To write well is a most 
useful and important accomplishment. All combina- 



FAVORS PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 37 



tious of letters, even the most difficult, must be learned 
systematically at first, and not be left to puzzle us when 
they occur. Good reading is taught by beginning slowly 
and quickening by degrees. In all this Quintilian shows 
himself in favor of a carefully graduated method, and 
discards the plunging '^ in medias res,'^ which has been 
inculcated by modern educationalists. 

Favors Public Schools.— By the seventh year a child 
may have learned to read and write with ease, may be 
stored with a copious supply of sayings of great men and 
select passages which he will never forget, and will, above 
all, have acquired a correct and clear pronunciation — 
distinct and harmonious — and fit to cope with any diffi- 
culty of expression. What is to be done with the* child 
thus educated ? Are we to send him to a public school 
or to keep him at home ? This question was as pressing 
and as difficult in Quintilian'& day as in our own. Quin- 
tilian speaks decidedly for the first alternative. The 
morals of public schools are undoubtedly corrupt, but so 
may be the morals of the home. In both cases much 
will depend on good disposition and careful home-train- 
ing. Quintilian complains that in the corrupt homes of 
imperial Rome children learn vices before they know that 
they are vices; effeminate and luxurious, they do not 
imbibe criminality from schools, but carry it them- 
selves into schools. Again, it is a mistake to suppose 
that the pupil will derive more care and attention 
from a single teacher. The best teachers will naturally 
be found in large schools, and there are many sub- 
jects which one man can teach as well to a large class 
as to a small one. Take pains, of course, to choose your 
school carefully; expect the master to give individual 



38 EDUCATIOJ^AL THEORIES. 

attention to his pupils, but do not, because some schools 
are bad, therefore reject schools altogether. 

Reasons. — Public education is, above everything, neces- 
sary for the orator, who must move in the greatest pub- 
licity and in the full daylight of public affairs ; he must 
accustom himself from his boyhood not to be abashed 
at the sight of man, nor to live in a solitary and re- 
cluse state of life. '^ The mind requires to be contin- 
ually excited and ]-oused, while in such retirement it 
either languishes and contracts rust, or, on the other 
hand, becomes swollen with empty conceit, since he who 
compares himself to no one else will necessarily attribute 
much to his own powers. Besides, when his acquire- 
ments are to be displayed in public, he is blinded at the 
sight of the sun, and stumbles at every new object, 
because he has learned in solitude that which is to be 
done in public. I say nothing of friendships formed at 
school, which remain in full force even to old age, as if 
cemented by a certain religious obligation, for to have 
been instructed in the same studies is a not less sacred 
bond than to have been instructed in the same sacred 
rites. Where shall a young man learn the sense, too, 
which is called common sense, when he has separated 
himself from society? Besides, at home he can learn 
only what is taught himself; at school even what is 
taught others. He will every day hear many things 
commended, many things corrected; the idleness of a 
fellow-student when reproved will be a warning to him, 
the industry of one commended will be a stimulus, emu- 
lation will be excited by praise, and he will think it a 
disgrace to yield to his equals in age, and an honor to 
surpass his seniors. All these things excite the mind,. 



THE TEACHER. 39 



and though ambition itself be a vice, yet it is often the 
parent of virtues.'^ Quintilian adds that masters them- 
selves, when they have but one pupil at a time with 
tliem, cannot feel the same energy and spirit in address- 
ing him as when they are excited by a large number of 
hearers. There would be no eloquence in the world if 
we were to speak only with one person at a time. 

The Teacher. — The first duty of a teacher is to ascer- 
tain the disposition and ability of his pupil, and the 
chief signs of this ability are found to consist in memory 
and in imitation. In this we must be on our guard 
against that ready and superficial quickness which is 
often mistaken for power. Each pupil requires that 
special kind of stimulus which is best suited to his dis- 
position. Work should alternate with play. Corporal 
punishment should in no case be allowed, and this for 
three reasons. 1. It is servile and degrading in its 
nature. 2. After a time even this loses its effect. 3. 
If the master does his duty in exerting steady work, 
there will be no occasion for it. It is, indeed, the weapon 
.of bad teachers, and no man should be allowed too much 
authority over an age so weak, and so unable to resist ill- 
treatment. Next comes the special duty of the gram- 
maticus. This will be mainly to teach the art of speak- 
ing correctly, and the illustration of the poets. It will 
include the art of writing and the practice of the critical 
judgment. He should also teach music as far as it is 
concerned with metre and rhythm, astronomy to under- 
stand the allusions of the poets, and philosophy for the 
same reason. Although the schoolmaster is necessarily 
concerned with the foundations, unless these are well and 
securely laid, the edifice built upon them will be totter- 



40 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

ing and unsafe. We need not be afraid of employing 
the minds of children on too many topics — diversity of 
employment is in itself a relaxation, and no age is so well 
able as this to stand the strain of complexity of studies. 
We now pass to the duties of the rhetorician. Boys 
are often sent to them at too late an age. The school- 
master lias trenched upon his functions. We can lay 
down no certain rule, but the pupil should — to use a 
modern phrase — ^leave school as soon as he is fit for the 
university. In choosing a teacher let us pay especial re- 
gard to his moral character. Let him be a parent to his 
pupils; let him have an equable temper, neither too 
affable nor too austere. Let him deserve, by his constant 
and unconscious influence, the love and reverence of his 
pupils. Above all, choose a teacher of eminence from 
the very first — the ablest teachers can if they will teach 
little things best. Besides, in the classes of the best 
teachers you will find the most desirable fellow-students 
for your son. The rhetorician will begin by going over 
again some of the work of the grammaticus. He will 
prefer exuberance to sterility. Nothing is worse than «• 
dry master; it is very easy for the power of boys to sink 
under too great severity of correction. Nothing cheers 
study so much as hope. The master should give his own 
composition as a model to his pupils, and encourage them 
to imitate it. You must make allowance for each pupil's 
age and ability. ''I used to say," Quintilian tells us, 
with regard to some compositions, '^ that I was satisfied 
with them for the present, but that a time would come 
when I should not allow them to produce compositions 
of such a character." It is quite true that a good teacher 
will suit the education of his pupils to their several 



QUINTILIAN S WORKS. 4 1 

capacities, just as a trainer in the palaestra will make one 
of his pupils a runner, another a boxer or wrestler. But 
this must not be carried too far. Sometimes this nat- 
ural disposition is a fault which must be restrained, and 
must be met by contrary treatment. Still we must not 
fight against nature. We must not take away any inborn 
good quality, we must only strengthen what is weak and 
supply what is deficient. If such is the duty of teachers, 
what is that of the learners ? They must love their tutors 
not less than their studies, and regard them as the par- 
ents, not indeed of their bodies, but of their minds. 

Quintilian's Works. — It is no part of our plan to fol- 
low minutely the rest of Quintilian's work, which is de- 
voted to the training of the lawyer and the statesman in 
the smallest details. But a 'short sketch of its scope and 
of what it aims to effect will give an idea of the elaborate 
pains with which the education of a Eoman was con- 
ducted. The passages I have quoted are to be found in 
the first of his twelve books, and in the first half of the 
second. The third book contains a full classification of 
the different kinds of oratory. In the fourth, after a 
preface, in which he expresses his gratitude for being 
selected as the teacher of the great-nephews of the 
Emperor Domitian, he treats of the different divisions 
of a speech, the purpose of the exordium, the proper 
form of a statement of facts, what constitutes the force 
of proofs, either in confirming our own assertions or re- 
futing those of our adversary, and of the different powers 
of the peroration, whether it be regarded as a summary 
of the arguments previously used, or as a means of ex- 
citing the feelings of the judge rather than of refreshing 
bis memory. This brings us to the end of the sixth 



42 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

book, which closes with remarks on the uses of humor 
and of altercation. The seventh book is extremely tech- 
nical. It deals with what Quintilian calls arrangement — 
the second part of oratory, as invention is the first. It 
is really a treatise on the logic of argument. The eighth 
and ninth books are given to style. This subject is 
treated with an exhaustiveness which has no parallel in 
modern education, excepting perhaps in France, which, 
as we said before, is of all countries in Europe the most 
faithful guardian of Roman principles of education. In 
the tenth book, the most popular and best knowi; of all, 
Quintilian, in giving advice for an orator^s reading, takes 
occasion to pass in review the great G-reek and Roman 
writers, and to criticise *them in turn. Many of those 
whom he mentions are lost to us forever ; it is some con- 
solation to think that the best, as a rule, still survive. 
The book concludes with miscellaneous remarks on 
imitation, on writing, on correcting what we have 
written, on the different kinds of composition, and on 
the power of speaking extempore. The eleventh book 
treats first of what is becoming in an orator, and of the 
different kinds of oratory which suit difl'erent audiences; 
next of the memory and of the means of cultivating it; 
and, lastly, of delivery, the management of the voice, 
gesture, and countenance. The last book attempts to 
connect the somewhat limited and special subject of 
oratorical education with the general interests of human- 
ity. A great orator must be a good man. For this he 
must study philosophy aud its three great branches^- 
dialectic or logic, ethics, and physics, 

Lastly, the experienced teacher gives advice when the 
public life of an orator should begin, and when it should 
end. Even then his activity will not come to an end, 



QUINTILIAN'S WORKS. 43 

He will write the history of his times, will explain the 
law to those who consult him, will write, like Quintilian 
himself, a treatise on eloquence, or set forth the highest 
principles of morality. The young men will throng 
round and consult him as an oracle, and he will guide 
them as a pilot. What can be more honorable to a man 
than to teach that of which he has a thorough knowl- 
edge? ^^I know not, ^^ he concludes, ^' whether an orator 
ought not to be thought happiest at that period of his 
life when, sequestered from the world, devoted to retired 
study, unmolested by envy, and remote from strife, he 
has placed his reputation in a harbor of safety, experi- 
encing while yet alive that respect which is more com- 
monly offered after death, and observing how his char- 
acter will be regarded by posterity." 



ANALYSIS OF CHAPTER II. 

PAGE 

Roman Ideas 26 

Effect on France and England 27 

The Greek Ideal 27 

The Roman Ideal 27 

Beginnings 28 

At School — Primary 29 

Advanced Studies 29 

Rhetoric 30 

Cato on Education 31 

Cicero on Education 32 

Quintilian 34 

His Plan 35 

Favors Public Schools 37 

Reasons 38 

The Teacher 89 

Quintilian's Works ......,,..,.... 41 



44 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES, 

HUMANISTIC EDUCATION, 

Christian Education— The Fathers. — ^We have de- 
scribed the two principal educational systems of the 
Pagan world. Whatever effects the introduction of 
Christianity wrought, it was only to be expected that it 
should bring about a great change in the character of 
education. It recognized no difference between slave 
and free, it gave women an honorable position by the 
side of men, it considered the individual not as existing 
only for the benefit of the State, but laid stress on the 
personal relations between God and each of his creat- 
ures. { It did not regard education as mainly of political 
importance, but estimated it by its bearing on the de- 
velopment of the spiritual life. It was natural that the 
Christian education should take at first an ecclesiastical 
character. The first pressing need was to provide min- 
istrants of all grades for the service of the Church, and 
it was only as a favor that laymen were gradually al- 
lowed to partake of this instruction. But even in the 
a2:e of the Fathers we find that the curriculum was not 
confined within these narrow limits. The Greeks were 
more liberal in their views than the Latins. The great 
Origen at Alexandria added philosophy, geometry, gram- 
mar, and rlietoric to the ecclesiastical course, and read 
with his pupils the Greek philosophers and poets. He 
used the method of dialectic, and taught his pupils by 



THE SCHOOLMEN. 45 

questions and answers, and encouraged tliem to pursue 
inquiry on their own account. But the crowJi and com- 
pletion of the edifice lay in the interpretation of Holy 
Scripture, and in the explanation of the subtlest truths 
of Christianity. This interpretation was no mere analy- 
sis of the dead letter, but an attempt to penetrate into 
the living spirit. On the other hand, the Latin fathers 
Tertullian, Cyprian, Jerome, and Augustine would have 
nothing to do with the heathen writings. A new edu- 
cation, they said, must be formed of a purely Christian 
character to supply Christian wants. 

The Schoolmen. — To the age of the Fathers succeeded 
the age of the Schoolmen, and to the period in which 
they flourished the education of the Middle Ages in the 
main belongs. We cannot give one uniform account of 
it as a whole. The education of the monastery was 
strongly contrasted with that of the castle, and these 
were again distinct from the education of the towns. 
These three streams continued to run parallel to each 
other until their course was profoundly modified by the 
combined effects of the Renaissance and the Reforma- 
tion. It was part of the design of Charles the Great to 
establish throughout his empire a system of lay and 
ecclesiastical schools, which should supply the place of 
that magnificent system of public schools which had 
grown up under the Roman empire. He spared no 
trouble in obtaining the best assistance ; the palace 
school was to be a model and an example to the rest. 
But he took education as he found it, and his work had 
no great influence on the development of educational 
theory. Very different was it with the monks. The 
great schools of Fulda, of Reichenau, of Corbey, of 



46 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

Hildesheim, of St. Gall^ all monasteries of the Bene- 
dictine rule, were not only centres of enliglitenment to 
the ages in which they flourished, but they presented to 
the world a model of Christian education which it has 
never entirely deserted. ^^Not a man in Europe now/' 
as Dr. Newman says, '^'^who talks bravely against the 
Church, but owes it to the Church that he can talk at 
all.'' The Benedictines were, in education, the Jesuits 
of the Middle Ages, but they taught with more sim- 
plicity and faithfulness, and not with ulterior designs 
of power and influence. Their great monasteries were at 
once fortresses against crime, refuges for the oppressed, 
centres of instruction for the people, the free home of 
the sciences, archives of literature, schools for the 
young, universities for the learned, chanceries for kings, 
seminaries for priests, schools of agriculture, of manu- 
facture, of niusic, architecture, and painting. Nor was 
the education of girls neglected. The nuns of St. Clare 
were as active in teaching as their brother monks. 

The Method of the Schoolmen. — The school was or- 
ganized with great care, and the curriculum was not 
nearly as narrow as we might have expected. The 
highest dignitary was the scliolasticus, or provost, 
called in Italian magniscola. He was highly paid and 
much honored, and exercised a general superintend- 
ence over the whole institution. Under him was 
the rector or head master, appointed and paid by the 
scUolasticus. He might be a layman or be married. 
As the scliolasticus withdrew more and more from 
teaching, the care of the higher education came gradu- 
ally into the rector's hands. Another important officer 
was the cantor , or singing master, who had also charge 



THE STUDIES. 47 



of the elaborate church calendar. The immediate care 
of the pupils was committed both in and out of school 
to circatores, who answer to the French mattres cVe- 
tudes, a class happily unknown in England. The sub- 
jects of education were the so-called seven liberal arts : 
Grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, music, arithmetic, geome- 
try, astronomy. The use of these was expressed in the 
following verses. 

Gramm loquitur, Dia vera docet, Bile verba colorat, 
Mus canit, Ar numerat, Geo ponderat, As colit astra. 

The three first formed the trivmm, the four last the 
quadrivium — the whole making a course of seven years. 
The study of religion, although not expressly men- 
tioned, was regarded as the object and the completion 
of the whole system. 

The Studies.— Grammar, principally Latin, although 
Greek and Hebrew were also taught to some extent, was 
imparted out of the works of Priscian, Diomedes, and 
Donatus. It went as far as the explanation of some of 
the best known writers, and the learning of prosody, ety- 
mology, and correctness of expression. This was the 
germ from which the later humanistic education was de- 
veloped. The scholars of the Reformation elaborated and 
perfected this first of the liberal studies, but there they 
stopped, and even in these days we hesitate to go be- 
yond them. Charles the Great did his best to develop 
the study of his native German. Dialectic was in 
theory synonymous with logic, but in the schools of the 
Middle Ages it went little beyond a collection of barren 
terminologies, borrowed from Aristotle after passing 
through a number of incongruous media. When the 
application of philosophy to theology was perfected by 



48 JSDUCATION'AL THEORIES, 

the schoolmen, this branch encroached largely on tlie 
field of education, and so discredited that study that it 
found no place in the new learning. Rhetoric was 
taught out of Quintilian and Cicero; sometimes from 
their original works, sometimes through the medium of 
Oapella, Bede, or Alcuin. Music, as might be expected, 
occupied a large space. With it were connected other 
arts of taste — the beautiful writing of manuscripts, 
architecture, and illumination. Arithmetic was too 
much taken up with the secret properties of numbers; 
Geometry was taught entirely out of Euclid, and was 
connected with elementary notions of geography. As- 
tronomy, in some respects hardly distinguishable from 
astrology, was the only branch of natural science which 
received attention. Even here the connection of educa- 
tion with the Church was not forgotten. Twenty-four 
doggerel Latin verses taught the sequence of the festi- 
vals of the Church ; they were called Cisio- Janus from 
the two words with which they commence. These two 
lines have reference to January. 

Cisio- Janus, Epi sibi vindicat Oc Fell Mar An 

Prisca. Fab. Ag. Vincenti. Pau. Pol. Car. nobile lumen. 

The days of the month are denoted by the order in 
wiiich the syllables occur. Cisio is the circumcision of 
Christ. Epi, the sixth syllable, is the Epiphany on the 
6th of January. Pau, the twenty-fifth syllable, is the 
conversion of St. Paul on the 25tli of January. 

The Discipline. — The discipline in these schools was 
very harsh and rough, and the rod was the only means 
of persuasion. The flogging which still disgraces some 
of our public schools is an inheritance from the monks 
and friars. Tliis harsh treatment brought with it its 



DEVELOPMENT OP THESE SCHOOLS. 49 

natural results : the pupils grew up unruly and ill-be- 
haved. We hear of schoolboys murdering each other, 
and of a cloister being burned down in revenge for a 
flogging. In these religious schools grew up the prac- 
tice of acting plays and mysteries by way of relaxation, 
which has continued in Catholic and Protestant schools 
to our own day. 

Development of these Schools. — We have before men- 
tioned the name of Charles the Great. The wish of the 
emperor was to establish throughout his vast empire, 
which extended from the Eider to the Garigliano, from 
the Raab to the Ebro, a culture, national, that is Ger- 
man in tone, based upon the foundations of the Church. 
He desired the clergy first to be well educated them- 
selves, and then to become centres of enlightenment to 
the surrounding laity. He himself set the example of 
industry and application to learning, and the cause of 
education suffered severely by his deatli. The tenth and 
eleventh centuries were times of greater ignorance and 
barbarism tlian the ninth. The two following centuries 
were occupied by the activity of the schoolmen. The 
human mind revolted from the fetters in which the 
clergy had attempted to confine it. A real interest in 
philosophy was awakened ; an attempt was made to rec- 
oncile the teaching of Aristotle with that of St. Paul, to 
harmonize reason and revelation. The principal effect 
which the schoolmen had on education was to determine 
the form in which instruction should be given. They 
had, at the same time, a considerable indirect influence 
in stimulating the intellect to speculation, m rousing a 
dissatisfaction with dogmas which were incapable of 
proof, and in preparing the way for the Reformation. 



50 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

Chivalry and Education. — Tlie age of the schoolmen 
was also the age of chivalry. Side by side with the edu- 
cation of the cloister and the cathedral was the education 
of the castle. Here the young knight learned a good 
deal that he learns at the present day in our public 
schools. The trivmm and quadrivmm were understood 
to be intended only for clerics and men of learning ; the 
knightly curriculum, the seven free arts, as they were 
called, were to ride, to swim, to shoot with bow and 
arrow, to box, to hawk, to play chess, and to write poe- 
try. In the cloister the body was mortified, in the castle 
it was exalted ; in the cloister the pupils might not so 
much as look at a woman's face, in the castle devotion to 
women was made the mainspring of conduct, the object 
and the reward of all higher eifort ; in the cloister the 
poetry chiefly valued consisted of verses in monkish 
Latin, in the castle the young knight learned all the 
mysteries of Proven9al verse, and could describe the 
perfection of his mistress in the ballad, or the canzone, 
or the sonnet, and accompany his poetry with the lute. 
In the three grades of this education, the pupil was suc- 
cessively page, squire, and knight, the first beginning 
with the seventh, the second with the fourteenth year. 
Careful rules were laid down for each period, and there 
can be little doubt that, under favorable circumstances, 
the education was very well suited to its purpose. The 
town schools as regards education were inferior to those 
we have mentioned, but they maintained a lay character 
in the midst of encroaching ecclesiasticism, they paid 
especial attention to the study of vernacular tongues, 
and they taught subjects such as history and geography 
better than they could be learned either in the cloister 
or the castle. 



THE '' DEVEJVTER'' INFLUENCE. 5 I 

The "Deventer" Influence. — It would be impossible, 
in a review of the education of the Middle Ages, to pass 
over the Brethren of the Common Life who lived and 
taught in the northern Netherlands on the banks of the 
Yssel. In the latter half of the fourteenth century and 
during the whole of the fifteenth they inspired the lower 
classes of their countrymen with the same love of classical 
study and literary excellence which in Italy was confined 
only to a favored few. Gerhard Groote, their founder 
(1340-1384), studied the scholastic philosophy at Paris, 
but returned to establish at Deventer a community of 
ascetic life and brotherly striving after a divine ideal. 
He only lived long enough to see the commencement of 
his work. This community was given to all good 
works, but especially to the teaching of the young. 
The Bible was the foundation on which they built ; but, 
besides this, they did not neglect the study of Ovid, 
Vergil, Horace, and Terence, of Plutarch, Sallust, 
Thucydides, and Herodotus. Nor were they entirely 
ignorant of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. From Deven- 
ter as a centre their schools spread first over Holland, 
then into Belgium, Germany, and France. The school 
at Herzogenbusch had 1200 scholars, that of Zwolle 
1000. The spirit of this saintly brotherhood still speaks 
to us in the '^^ Imitation of Christ/^ probably written by 
Thomas of Kempen, who breathed into his book the 
essence of their simplicity and self-denial. They im- 
proved the teaching of Latin both in method and cor- 
rectness, and published an encyclopaedia of geography 
and history containing everything which it was necessary 
for a student to know. During the fifteenth century 
they were indisputably at the head of education in the 
north of Europe. Their end is very pathetic. The 



$2 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

spread of the art of printing took away their chief source 
of income;, that of copying books ; as they had sup- 
planted the learning of the monks by a better teaching, 
so they were not able to stand against the reviving light 
of humanism. The " Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum/' 
the wittiest squib of the Middle Ages, which did much 
to secure the victory of the new learning, are written in 
the name of the brothers of Deventer. But before they 
perished they had given to the world their most distin- 
guished scholar, Desiderius Erasmus, who, living in an 
age of transition and sympathizing with that which was 
departing and with that which had not yet come, linked 
together, as no one else could have done, the new learn- 
ing with the old. We stand now at the threshold of the 
Renaissance. 

Humanistic Education — The Classics. — The study of 
the humanities, that is, of the Greek classics in the 
original, is best fixed by the date of the conquest of Con- 
stantinople by the Turks in 1453. The breaking up of 
the Greek empire scattered a number of Greek scholars 
over Europe, and made Greek literature familiar to all 
cultivated minds. This v/as the later and more impor- 
tant Eenaissance. But there was an earlier Renaissance 
of the thirteenth century. Dante, penetrated as he is 
with the learning of the schoolmen, reverences Vergil as 
his leader and master. Petrarch, nearly his contem- 
porary, devoted his best talents to the revival of the 
study of antiquity. The flush of this early dawn spread 
even to France and England. The first great Italian 
schoolmaster of the new type was Vittorino da Feltre, • 
who taught at Mantua, at the court of the Gonzagas. 
Ho was a little, lean, sprightly man, who lived entirely 



MR ASM us. 53 



among his scholars, and devoted himself to their service. 
He was lodged by his princely masters in a palace with 
galleries, halls, and porticoes, spacious courts, and 
springing fountains, the walls painted with frescoes of 
children ait play. He laid great stress on moral educa- 
tion; |his discipline was strict both for himself and 
others. He was the companion of his pupils in play as 
well as work. The main point of his instruction was 
language. His favorite authors were Vergil and Cicero, 
Homer and Demosthenes. His pupils were expected to 
know these authors before they went on to any others. 
They were also trained in discussion, in mathematics, 
and in music. The best masters in each study were en- 
gaged by him. Eour learned Greeks inspired a taste for 
their own language. Vittorino lived to a good old age, 
dying in 1477. His spiritual successor in Mantua was 
Castiglione. the author of the well-known book, '^1\ 
Cortigiano,^^ which was intended by him to be a complete 
handbook of a courtier^s education. These works had 
their effect in England. At this time the communica- 
tion between Italy and England was easy and frequent. 
Inspired by these influences John Colet founded the 
school of St. PauFs in London, and Thomas More 
sketched the plan of a refined education in Utopia. 
These votaries of a more liberal culture had no idea of 
the wide effects which would result from this movement. 
Erasmus. — It eventually terminated in two directions 
— the reformation of religion, and the reformation of 
learning. Erasmus stands at the parting of the ways, 
and may be regarded as typical of the whole change. 
He has left us several formal treatises on the education 
of youth. Before the seventh year, letters (even Greek 



54 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

and Latin) are to be taught in play, as well as religion 
and reverence, and discipline is to be mild rather than 
severe. Next comes the important choice of a tutor. 
While your child is young keep him with you in your 
house; iu large schools there is great danger of corrup- 
tion. Afterward, it is well to educate live or six boys 
together, or, if your son goes to a public school, give 
him a private tutor. Words must come before things. 
Greek and Latin grammars are to be learned together. 
When the pupil is well grounded in language he can pay 
attention to the subject matter, especially what is con- 
tained in Greek. The memory is to be carefully trained, 
first by great exactness in teaching, then by hanging tables 
of things to be remembered on the walls. The sense of 
authors is to be fully explained, without an idle parade 
of useless learning. Greek grammar is always to be a 
few steps ahead of Latin. Translations of Greek into 
Latin are to be practised. But we must not push this 
exact knowledged so far as to attempt to write like Cicero. 
Since the time of Cicero the circumstances of the world 
have changed. The true imitation of the ancients is 
not to follow the letter but the spirit of their works. 
Besides the sciences, children should learn an art — 
painting, sculpture, or architecture. Religious instruc- 
tion is of the highest importance. Eeverence is to be 
taught by observing the splendor of the heavens, the 
richness of the earth, the sparkling fountain, the mur- 
muring stream, the boundless sea, the various kinds of 
animals, all created for the service of man. The edu- 
cation of girls is as important as that of boys. The 
foundations of either education must be laid in the 
house. The groundwork of all teaching lies in reverence 
and obedience to parents. 



ERASMUS. 55 



Thus we see that at the very time when the old Church 
was losing its hold over the minds of men, circumstances 
were occurring to give to the education which it afforded 
a narrow character of a peculiar kind. Meagre and un- 
satisfactory as was the instruction of the Church of the 
Middle Ages, it was at least encyclopaBdic in its aim and 
intention. It comprehended, or claimed to comprehend, 
the grammar of the humanists, the logic of the school- 
men, the rhetoric of the Eomans, the music of the 
Greeks, the mathematics of Newton, and the science of 
Herbert Spencer. Disgust with scholastic subtlety, and 
the newly realized charm of Plato and Cicero, beguiled 
it into a laborious imitation of the style and language of 
the ancients. The breach between the reformed and 
unreformed Church left the Protestants without any 
higher education. Luther and Melanchthon labored hard 
to supply this want, but one by necessity, and the other 
by the predilection of his nature, followed in the path 
already chosen for its children by the rival faith. ^Ve 
shall see how the curriculum of humanistic education 
was systematized by John Sturm, of Strasburg, into a 
form which has lasted as the pattern of secondary edu- 
cation down to our own generation. The classical edu- 
cation, which is the staple production of our public 
schools, is in a certain sense the accident of an accident. 
It happened that in the beginning of the sixteenth cen- 
tury the education of Catholic Europe was strongly hu- 
manistic; it happened that the breach of the great 
schism gave the Eeformers a strong inducement to imi- 
tate the culture of their Catholic rivals. But a great 
opportunity was lost. , Had the realistic education of 
Eatich and Comeniusbeen preached a little earlier, or had 
Protestant nations welcomed it with greater unanimity. 



56 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

the new religion might have framed for itself a new 
course of instruction, which, leading to far richer results 
than can be obtained by the study of language, would 
have advanced by a hundred years the intelligence of 
modern Europe. 

Luther and Melanchthon. — Still the Eeformation did 
much, for Luther, the founder of the new Church, 
looked to national education as the best bulwark and 
defence of the edifice he had reared. He was, perhaps, 
the first to conceive the idea of a really universal educa- 
tion. His address to the municipal authorities of all 
the towns in Germany in 1524 is a manifesto to the Ger- 
man people similar to that by which Fichte in 1813 
called upon his countrymen to seek in self -culture the 
truest foundations Of national life and strength. \ He 
founded religion on the life of the family, and made his 
own family a model for others to imitate. The duty of 
the family was to educate first in religion, then in the 
refinements of worldly learning. But the teaching of 
Luther would not have commended itself to the culti- 
vated spirits of the time if he had not possessed a coad- 
jutor of a different type, who justly^ earned the title of 
2)rcBceptor Germanice, Philip Schwarzerde or Melanch- 
thon. Both as a writer of school-books and as a practical 
teacher, he succeeded in giving form to the nev>^ learning. 
He threw himself into the study of Greek, and when 
almost a boy himself wrote a grammar for school-boys. 
This was followed a year later by a Latin grammar. 
Conscious, perhaps, of the defects of mere linguistic 
training, he worked at other departments of the old cur- 
riculum. He wrote an elementary treatise on logic and 
dialectic, and another on rhetoric intended as an intro- 



STURM— HIS SYSTEM. 57 

duction to Cicero and Quintilian. He composed a trea- 
tise on physical science, '^ Initia doctrinae phjsicas/^ 
which was the earnest of a better treatment of this im- 
portant subject. He also wrote on psychology and 
ethics. But the strength of his mind did not lie in this 
direction. He was following a more congenial task in 
writing explanatory editions of classics, like those which 
have in our own day received so wide a development. 
Greater than the influence of his writings was that of his 
personal teaching. By his lectures at the university of 
Wittenberg, delivered sometimes to an audience of two 
thousand students of all nations, and by the school which 
he held in his own house, he exhibited a model of what 
such institutions were to become in later days. It 
requires an effort of mind for us to realize how serious a 
thing it was in embracing the reformed faith to break 
with the intellectual traditions of the Middle Ages. 
Let one example suffice. The writings of Thomas 
Aquinas are scarcely known to Protestants; yet if we 
were drawing up a muster roll of the intellectual giants 
of the world, he would have every claim to stand in the 
first rank. 

Sturm — His System.— It is mainly due to Melanchthon 
that Protestantism became acceptable to the intellect of 
the man of letters. But the man who gave a permanent 
form to the new education, which has lasted but little 
changed to the present day, is John Sturm, of Strasburg, 
who was rector of the gymaasium of that town for forty-five 
years, from 1538 to 1583. He died in the year 1589, at the 
age of eighty-three. He occupied a position of eminence 
in Protestant Europe. He was the friend of Cliarles V. of 
Germany and of Elizabeth of England. His fame reacheil 



58 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES, 

to Hungary, Transylvania, and Poland. In 1578 his 
school contained several thousand students. It will be 
worth while to describe his system of instruction in some 
detail. He wished his pupils to come to school at the 
age of six or seven; the school course should occupy nine 
years. At sixteen the pupils should remove to the 
academy, where lectures should be substituted for regu- 
lar lessons. His education was to be considered as com- 
plete at the age of twenty-one. Of the nine years spent 
at the gymnasium, seven were to be devoted to the 
mastery of pure idiomatic Latin, the next two to the 
acquisition of an elegant style, and in the five collegiate 
years the pupil was to be fashioned into a consummate 
speaker. Thus the groundwork of the whole system is 
language. It is humanism in its purest form. To the 
ninth class was at a later period prefixed a tenth. We 
possess the detailed instructions which Sturm gave to the 
teachers of each of his classes, so that we can speak with 
certainty as to his method. In the tenth class was to be 
learned the alphabet, spelling, reading and writing, all 
the paradigms of the nouns and verbs in Latin, and the 
German catechism. The master of the ninth class was 
to add to this previous knowledge the anomalous and 
irregular forms. The scholars were also to learn a num- 
ber of Latin words arranged in regular series, so that 
they might be supplied with a rich vocabulary. The 
work of the eighth class in its earlier months was to go 
over what they had previously learned and to extend the 
vocabulary, the pupils being encouraged to make lists of 
v/ords for themselves. At the end of the year they began 
to read select letters of Cicero, and composed short 
written essays in style. They also learned the German 



VALUE OF STURM'S SYSTEM. 59 

catechism. The seventh class began syntax, and this 
was carefully applied to their previous acquisitions, the 
examples being mainly drawn from Cicero. The exer- 
cises in style were continued with the help of the black- 
board, and Oato was read as well as Cicero, and music 
was commenced. In the sixth class at the age of ten the 
boys began Greek, reading the fables of ^sop. To the 
harder letters of Cicero were now added the comedies of 
Terence and some selections of Latin poetry. The fifth 
class learned prosody and mythology, Cicero's Cato and 
Laelius, and the eclogues of Vergil were read. The 
lessons in style were continued, and at the end of the 
year they were initiated into the art of making nonsense 
Latin verses. The fourth class read the eighth oration 
against Verres, the epistles and satires of Horace, and 
one of the easier epistles of St. Paul in Greek. The 
third class added to this the graces of rhetoric, tropes, 
and figures, all illustrated by examples. In Greek they 
read Demosthenes and began Homer. The exercises in 
style were continued and carried to a higher level, and 
the comedies of Terence and Plautus were acted. The 
chief subject of teaching in the second class was logic and 
its sister rhetoric, both of which were applied to the 
orations of Demosthenes and Cicero. Finally, the first 
class was to carry logic and rhetoric to a higher point, 
and the students were now considered to be ready for 
the university. 

Value of Sturm's System. — No one who is acquainted 
with the education given at our principal classical schools, 
Eton, AVinchester, and Westminster, forty years ago, can 
fail to see that their curriculum was framed to a great 
degree on Sturm's model. During our own generation 



6o EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

the subjects of scliool teaching have been largely multi- 
plied^ and we can aiford to look down on the humanistic 
scheme as narrow and incomplete; but it had at least 
this merit, that it was a well-considered plan, harmoni- 
ous in its arrangement, with its parts well fitting into 
one another. The master of each class knew precisely 
what the boys confided ta him were expected to learn. 
AVhen they proceeded to the university the preliminary 
instruction which they took with them had been well 
defined. This, at least in our English schools, is not 
the case now. No schemes of education which are not 
carefully framed and exactly determined in their general 
outline, if not in their details, can be carried out without 
a serious waste of time. 



ANALYSIS OF CHAPTER III. 

PAGE 

Cliristlan Education . 44 

The Schoolmen 45 

The Method of the Schoolmen 46 

The Studies 47 

The Discipline .... 48 

Development of these Schools 49 

Chivalry and Education 50 

The " Deventer " Influence 51 

Humanistic Education 52 

Erasmus 53 

Luther and Melanchthon 56 

Sturm— His System 57 

Value of Sturm's System 59 



DEFECTS OF THE HUMANISTS. 6 1 



IHE REALISTS— RATICH AND COMENIUS. 

Defects of the Humanists. — It will have been seen that 
the ideal of the humanistic education was the study of 
words. When Sturm's pupil had passed through his 
nine or ten years of school and was transferred to the 
university, he was still to be perfected in style, and to 
be made a consummate writer and speaker. There were 
two disadvantages in this conception of education. 
First, that words were taught instead of things ; and 
second, that language was taught not as a living organic 
whole, fitted and complete for the service of life, but as 
a collection of dried specimens tabulated and arranged 
by the ingenuity of grammarians. Indeed, the nomen- 
clature of grammar, parts of speech, terms of prosody 
and syntax, elaborate names for figures of expression, 
were thought of greater importance than the life and 
vigor of the poet or the orator. We should expect that 
these faults would have been discovered, and a stimulus 
was undoubtedly given to their correction by the dawn 
of that illumination of intellect which in the history of 
the human mind is usually connected with the name of 
Bacon. 

Bacon's Ideas. — Certainly, more than any man of his 
time. Bacon seems to have realized that he was 
standing at the vestibule of a new age, and was charged 



EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 



with the mission of showing the insufficiency of the 
past and the bright hopes of the future. The secret 
which he discovered was to substitute in inquiry the 
method of induction for the method of deduction. In- 
stead of setting out with a preconceived principle or an 
inherited formula, and deducing all knowledge from it_, 
men were encouraged to interpret nature, and to learn 
her secrets by careful inquiry and experience. The 
lock was to be opened, that was the problem. Other 
philosophers had tried key after key, each more compli- 
cated than the other.' Bacon said, take the lock to 
pieces and examine its mechanism, and you will then be 
able to make a key which will open it. But the mind 
must approach the problem without prejudice ; the idols, 
as he calls them, of the race, of the den, of the market- 
place, and of the theatre, must be got rid of. In other 
words, we must clear our minds of the prepossessions 
which we have as human beings, of those which are pe- 
culiar to our individual nature, of those which arise from 
the ordinary language of mankind, and of those which 
are caused by the tyranny of philosophical systems. For 
men whose minds were thus prepared for speculation. 
Bacon organized a new method of interrogating nature ; 
he formed a conspectus of the sciences, showing exactly 
what point of advance each of them had reached in his 
own day, and in this he showed his enlightenment by 
ranging pedagogics, or the science of education, as a de- 
partment of psychology. 



Icli stand am Thor, ihr solltet SchUissel seyn 

Zwar euer Bart ist kraus, doch hebt ihr niclit die Riegel. 

Fau8t. 



kATKE OR RATICH. 63 

Ratke^or Ratich. — It was only natural that the new 
method should give a great impulse to the science of 
education. Hitherto in that_, if in any, mere empiricism 
had been followed, and in that, if in any, it was reason- 
able to follow the guidance of nature. The man who 
felt himself called to reorganize education on this new 
basis, to train a new generation of the human race fit for 
more difficult enterprises and more extended conquests, 
was John Amos Comenius. But his name is generally 
connected with that of a distinguished forerunner whose 
speculations had a large effect in stimulating his own, 
and who, if he confined his actual reforms to a narrower 
sphere, showed that he had to some degree realized the 
possibility of the improvement which his successor was 
to carry out. Wolfgang Eatke, sometimes called Raticli- 
ius according as we follow the high or low German form 
of his name, was born at Wilster, in Holstein, in 1571. 
His early studies were devoted to Hebrew, Arabic, and 
mathematics, and in the course of these he developed a 
new method of teaching which he offered to the German 
Diet at Frankfort, May 7th, 1612, as a scheme fraught 
with momentous consequences to the improvement of 
the human race. A year later he had an opportunity 
given him of trying his system in the capital of the 
principality of Anhalt-Kothen, but his life, like that of 
most educational reformers, was full of failure and dis- 
appointment. His best chance of useful employment 
lay with Oxenstiern, Chancellor of Sweden, one of the 
most enlightened men of his age, who spared no effort 
to increase that little wisdom with which he knew hu- 
man affairs to be usually conducted. Oxenstiern asked 
for an interview, but Ratich sent him a quarto instead. 



64 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

When he had mastered it he found that the author had 
displayed admirably the faults of existing schools, but 
had not prepared any sufficient remedy for their improve- 
ment. Ratich died in 1635, at the age of G4. 

His Ideas. — His reforms when examined do not amount 
to much more than a better method of teaching lan- 
guages. The pupil is first to learn his mother tongue. 
This is a great step in advance. German occupied the 
first three classes in the school at Kothen. In the 
fourth class the pupil proceeded to Latin, and for the 
teaching of this Terence was chosen as a model book, to 
occupy the same position as Telemaque did in the 
scheme of Jacotot. Ratich desci'ibes his peculiar 
method at great length. In default of German transla- 
tions of Terence, the teacher is first to give an account 
of the substance of the whole play and of each act in 
German, and is then to translate the author twice 
through literally, word for word, the boys sitting and 
listening attentively. This is to occupy a few weeks. 

Then the boys are to begin to translate, being always 
helped by the teacher, and when they have gone through 
the author a third time, they are then at last to take the 
grammar into their hands. In the fourth repetition of 
Terence the boys are to have their grammar before 
them, and carefully to compare every rule with the ex- 
amples as they occur. In other repetitions the analysis 
of the author is to be carried out with still greater com- 
pleteness, and to be continued until it is thoroughly 
known. Not until an intimate familiarity with the 
style of Terence has been attained is composition to be 
attempted, and then in short oral sentences, framed first 
by the teacher and then by the pupils. 



METHOD IN LANGUAGE. 65 



Method in Language. — It will be seen that this 
method is the exact opposite of that pursued by Stnrm. 
There the formal part of grammar, divided elaborately 
into portions for each year, was made the staple, and 
the reading of the author considered as subordinate. 
With Ratich, the very first thing was to state clearly 
the general drift of the author^s meaning, and the gram- 
mar was abstracted by the efforts of each individual pu- 
pil. This method of proceeding in learning languages 
from the concrete to the abstract has found many advo- 
cates since the time of Ratich, the most distinguished of 
whom are Jacotot and Hamilton. It is in all probability 
the best and readiest way of learning, but it requires two 
conditions which are not always at hand — ability in the 
teacher, and diligence in the pupil. 

His Aphorisms. — Besides this method, of which we 
have a complete account, Ratich has left a number of 
aphorisms on teaching which have a wider scope. These 
are : (1) In all teaching follow the order and course of 
nature, for all learning which is enforced and contrary 
to nature is harmful, and weakens nature. (2) Teach 
only one thing at a time, for nothing hinders the under- 
standing so much as the attempt to learn many things 
at the same time ; therefore, first finish one thing well 
and then go on to another. You can learn any language 
out of a single author. This precept is the same as the 
tout est dans tout of Jacotot. (3) Often rejoeat the same 
thing ; what is often repeated sinks deeply into the un- 
derstanding, but by learning many things in a confused 
way the understanding is confused and shaken. (4) 
Learn everything first in the mother tongue. This has 
the advantage that the pupil has then only to think of 



66 EDUCATIONAL THEORIEB. 

the thing he has to learn, and not of the medium in 
which he learns it. From the mother tongue proceed 
to other languages. (5) Learn everything without com- 
pulsion. By blows and compulsion studies become hate- 
ful to young students. It is also against nature. Boys 
are beaten because they do not remember what you have 
taught them, but if you had taught them properly they 
would have remembered it. jS^ow they have to suffer 
for your negligence. To carry this out farther, Ratich 
proposed to divide the duties of teaching and punish- 
ment. The teacher must do nothing but teach, disci- 
pline belongs to the scholar ch. The pupil must conceive 
no dislike for the teacher, but love him more and more. 
(6) Learn nothing by heart ; if a man depends much on 
learning by heart he loses understanding and acuteness. 
If the mind has grasped anjrthing by frequent repetition 
it is naturally remembered without difficulty. Lessons 
must not be given for two consecutive hours. The pupil 
must listen to the teacher in silence, he must say noth- 
ing, and ask no questions during the lessons so as not to 
interrupt the others. All questions must be asked after 
the lesson. (7) Have uniformity in everything, both in 
the methods of teaching as well as in books and precepts. 
Let the grammars correspond with each other as far as 
may be, whether they be in German, Hebrew, or Greek. 
(8) First teach the thing itself, then the manner of the 
thing. Give no rules until you have given the matter, 
the author, and the language. Rules without matter 
confuse the understanding. (9) Teach everything by 
experience and inquiry, piece by piece. Authority is of 
no value by itself unless ground and reason be there also. 



COMENIUS. 6y 



No rule or notion will be implanted in the mind unless 
it has been verified and found correct by proof. 

Comeniiis. — John Amos Comenius or Komenski was 
a reformer of a more vigorous type. He was born at 
Nivnitz, in Moravia, in 1592. When he was twenty- 
six years old the Thirty Years' War broke ont, and nn- 
fortunately the whole of his manhood was coincident 
with that disastrous period. In 1616 he published a 
short Latin Grammar, to introduce a better method of 
learning the language. In 1627 he produced a short 
methododogy, or course of study, and at Lissa, in Sile- 
sia, in the year 1631, he wrote his first great book, the 
^^Janua Linguarum Keserata,"" the door of languages 
unlocked. It consists of a number of dialogues and re- 
marks on familiar subjects, with translations on the op- 
posite page, and simple illustrations. It soon made the 
tour of Europe, and was translated into twelve lan- 
guages. Seven years later he was invited to Sweden, 
but he refused the invitation and devoted himself to 
composing his greatest work, the '^^Didactica Magna," 
a complete handbook of education in all its branches, 
and the first attempt to write a systematic treatise on 
the whole subject. An extract from the preface to this 
work made its way to England, and had, as we shall 
afterward see, an important effect on Milton. In the 
autumn of 1641 Comenius was summoned to England 
by order of the Parliament. The .king being in Scot- 
land and the Parliament prorogued for three mouths, he 
spent the winter in London. He tells us that the Par- 
liament intended to appoint a committee to inquire into 
the question, and that they had some idea of assigning 
to him some college with its revenues, whereby a certain 



68 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

number of learned and industrious men might be hon- 
orably maintained, either for a term of years or in per- 
petuity. *' There was even named for the purpose the 
Savoy in London ; Winchester College, also, out of Lon- 
don, was named; and again, nearer the city, Chelsea 
College, inventories of which and of its revenues were 
communicated to us, so that nothing seemed more cer- 
tain than that the design of the great Verulam concern- 
ing the opening somewhere of an universal college of all 
nations devoted to the advancement of the sciences 
would be carried out. But a rumor that Ireland was in 
a state of commotion, and that more than 200,000 of the 
English there had been slaughtered in one night, the 
sudden departure of the king from London, and the clear 
indications that a most cruel war was on the point of 
breaking out, threw all these plans into confusion, and 
compelled me and my friends to hasten our return." 
Returning to Germany he remodelled his '* Janua Lin- 
guarum," and published it in 1648, the year of the 
Peace of Westphalia. In 1650 Comenius was summoned 
to Hungary by Prince Rakoczi. He remained with him 
four years, and devoted himself to remodelling the school 
system on his estates. He devised a system oi school 
work, dividing the school into seven classes, each class 
to occupy a year, from the age of ten to that of seven- 
teen. In the first three years his own books, the '^ Ves- 
tibulum," the '^^ Janua,^^ and the *^^ Atrium," were to be 
read. The next four classes were to study, respectively, 
philosophicaf logica, politica, and theologica, or theosoph- 
ica. The first three classes were to learn common 
objects, and Latin, writing, arithmetic, geometry and 
music, games and gymnastics ; the fourth class was to 



COMENIUS'S IDEAS. 69 

learn Greek and Church music, and to begin dramatic 
representations ; the fifth class logic and metaphysics, 
and so on. His complete works on education under the 
title of ^^ Opera Didactica" were published in 1657. He 
died on November 15th, 1671. It is an evidence of the 
neglect with which educational speculation has been 
treated, that the best works of this powerful and system- 
atic thinker have been so little read. Let us attempt 
to ascertain from his own great treatise on education 
what his principles of education were.* 

Hisfldeas. — The end of man, Comenius says, is to at- 
tain eternal happiness in and with God. This life is 
only a preparation for eternity. The life of man is 
threefold — vegetative, animal, and intellectual. The 
last alone is real. Man has by nature the impulse to 
improve the qualities with which he is endowed, so that 
he may grow in virtue and piety. But this end can only 
be attained by education. It is the duty and the object 
of the school to help a man to compass this, for men are 
moulded more easily in their youth. Education in the 
school should be common to all, and the same for both 
sexes. The three graces of the soul are perception, will, 
and memory, or conscience. All men are naturally 
anxious to use their perception, to obtain harmony of 
their moral nature, and the love of God. For the 
groundwork of all men's nature is the same ; the differ- 
ence of individuals consists only in excess or defect of 
qualities .which spoil the harmony of nature, and the 
problem of education is how to get rid of this evil. If 

' In what follows I have attempted, with the help of Vogel, a 
short abstract of the " Didactica Magna." 



70 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

this theory be true, man can only become man by edu- 
cation. 

Proposes to follow Nature. — The true method of ed- 
ucation is to follow nature, and, as every man^s nature 
develops itself by virtue of an implanted tendency, you 
have only to assist these tendencies and to remove 
hindrances out of their path. Upon these general prin- 
ciples Comenius founds a system of short, easy, and 
speedy learning. He goes into every detail in turn, and 
completes his inquiry with a full description of the or- 
ganization of his school. In describing his method he 
attempts to deduce everything from the teaching of 
nature. In this he often follows a false analogy, and 
this defect has probably stood in the way of the ready 
acceptance of his theories. He says that you should 
follow this and that precept, because this is what the 
bird does, and because the tree grows in such and such 
a manner. He thus seems to imagine that the analogy 
of organic nature can always be applied to the inner 
growth of the soul. This, however, does not deprive 
his principle of practical value. Further, there is a 
ring of false magniloquence in the promises with which 
he sets out. There is a discrepancy between the scheme 
of an instauration of universal learning and the publica- 
tion of a picture-book like the '^ Orbis Pictus.'^ More- 
over his psychology is defective, as could only be ex- 
pected in that age. But these faults do not deprive his 
system of its intrinsic value. 

Analysis of His System. — To continue our analysis. 
A man is destined by his nature to be three things : (1) 
a reasonable being ; (2) a being bearing rule over others ; 
(3) a being who is the pattern of his Creator. (1) As a 



COMENIUS'S IDEA OF THE SCHOOL. J I 



reasonable being man must know what the world con- 
tains ; the power of the elements, the change of the 
seasons, the stars, the nature of animals, the thoughts 
of men, plants, all that is open and all that is concealed, 
the knowledge of the artificer, the art of the speaker. 
(2) In his second capacity man must know to assign 
each thing to its proper end, so as to be able to turn it 
to his advantage ; to move royally among all creatures, 
to submit to no created thing, not even to his own body ; 
to turn everything to his service, to be able to command 
all movements and actions, external and internal, his 
own and those of others with prudence. (3) As the 
pattern of God, man must represent in his life the com- 
pleteness of the divine type. In sliort he must know 
all things, command all things, including himself, refer 
everything, including himself, to God, as the source of 
all things. 

This result is to be brought about in three ways : (1) 
by education and instruction ; (2) by virtue and moral- 
ity ; (3) by religion and piety. Education or instruc- 
tion includes the knowledge of all arts and languages ; 
morality includes not only external demeanor but ex- 
ternal and internal harmony of emotion ; religion in- 
cludes reverence. These things make up the whole man. 
Everything else, health, strength, beauty, riches, good- 
ness, friendship, prosperity, and long life, are nothing 
but the graces of life. 

His Idea of the School.— Now all these things, if 
taught at all, must be taught in early youth, and chil- 
dren must be taught together in common schools. The 
duty of school is : (1) to instruct in sciences and arts ; 
(2) to refine the methods of expression : (3) to educate 



72 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

with a view to morality ; (4) to secure the reverence of 
God in the heart. Schools have been fitly called the 
workshops of humanity, and they deserve this name if 
they make men (1) wise in spirit, (2) clever in action, 
(3) pious in heart. The duty of schools may be divided 
into two large sections ; we learn in them (1) the things 
which surround us, (2) ourselves. Now it is obvious 
that the schools at present existing are not sufficient to 
fulfil this object ; it is, however, possible to draw up a 
system which will educate the entire body of youth that 
is capable of receiving education, will educate them in 
all things which make men wise, and just, and pious, 
and will complete this education before the years of 
maturity, without compulsion, blows, or severity, in a 
real and not a superficial manner, and perform this task 
in a way which will not be difficult, but easy. 

How Education can Aid. — The great principle on 
which we are to depend as our foundation is, that a 
man^s nature will infallibly move in that direction in 
which nature impels it, and this even with pleasure, 
feeling pain if it be held back. All that is required in 
education is impulse and direction, and to remove the 
hindrances which God has suffered to exist for the stim- 
ulating of our zeal. Now the means by which this 
education can be accomplished is as follows : (1) by the 
lengthening of life ; (2) by the shortening of methods ; 
(3) by the seizing of opportunities ; (4) by enlarging the 
powers of perception ; (5) by laying a sure and immova- 
ble foundation. In this way we shall be able : (1) to 
learn more ; (2) to learn more quickly ; (3) to learn more 
surely ; (4) to learn more thoroughly. Length of life 
may be obtained either by prolonging life itself, or by 



RULES OF EDUCATION, 73 

doing a great deal in a short life. It has been held that 
life might easily be prolonged to 120 years. Certainly 
few people make the best use of their lives. The school 
can help in both these matters. It can pay careful re- 
gard to the rules of health, create a sound mind in a 
sound body, and it can train men to make the most of 
their lives. We must observe here that Comenius does 
not make health the only or the principal object of life, 
but health coupled with a useful and active existence. 

Eules of Education. — What are the principal rules of 
learning? (1) Education must begin in the springtime 
of life ; (2) the morning hours are the best for study ; 
(3) all subjects of study must be carefully proportioned 
to the age and capacity of the learner. Then we must 
have all the appliances of study close at hand — books, 
models, and tables. In school books we must take care 
that the matter precedes the form ; that is, that the 
concrete comes before the abstract. So we must learn 
things before words, and words before grammar. We 
must learn the details of an art or science before its 
principles, we must learn examples before rules. Again, 
attendance at the school must be constant, as interrup- 
tions hinder learning, and we must take care not to 
teach our pupil what he is not fit to learn. We must 
not teach too many things at a time in hopeless confu- 
sion. This would be like a baker who is always opening 
his oven to put in new loaves, or a shoemaker who tried 
to make five pairs of shoes at once. We must not over- 
burden the memory. Understanding comes first, then 
memory, then speech. In teaching it is best first to 
give a general sketch of the whole subject, then to give 
rules and examples, then the exceptions to the rules. 



74 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

and lastly, detailed explanations. In teacliing we mnst 
not proceed by leaps, but must divide our studies into 
classified grades, so that the earlier may prepare the way 
for the later. We must so arrange matters that every 
year, every month, every day, every hour, has its ap- 
pointed task. The school must be in a quiet place, free 
from noise and disturbance, and non-attendance must be 
strictly discouraged. We must guard children against 
books and companions likely to do them harm. Such 
are the rules for leai uing surely. 

How the Child is to be Educated. — Now to learn 
easily we must observe the following. Education must 
begin betimes, not distracted with a variety of teachers, 
and moral education must take precedence of the rest. 
Children must not be forced to study against their will, 
but we must do our best to arouse an enthusiasm for 
learning in our pupils, and our methods must be such as 
to make learning as easy as possible. For this purpose 
the teacher must be cheerful and kind, the school must 
be airy and attractive, adorned with pictures aAd fur- 
nished with a garden, and the manner of teaching must 
be as far as possible natural. Emulation must be stimu- 
lated by public declamations, promotions, and prizes. 
The principles of an art must be expressed in short and 
clear rules, and each rule must consist of short and clear 
words, and be furnished with several examples. The 
transition must be from the easier to the harder. How 
absurd it is to give the rules of Latin grammar in Latin, 
or to teach by means of a foreign master ! Teacher and 
learner should speak the same language, and all explana- 
nations should be given in the mother tongue. 



PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. 75 

Practical Suggestions. — First comes understanding, 
then writing, then speech. Examples must be drawn 
from common objects. With children we must educate 
first their perception, tlien their memory, then their 
insight, and, lastly, their judgment. Again, the school 
hours must not be too long — four at the outside, and as 
much again for private study. Nothing must be learned 
by heart which is not previously understood. Corporal 
punishment must not be used. If a child cannot learn, 
whose fault is it, his or the teacher's? All exjolanations 
must be as clear as daylight. The eye should help 
the ear, the hand the speech, so it is well to employ 
models, pictures, and black-boards. If possible, let 
children see the use of what they are learning. It is 
best to have one method for all subjects of study, and 
that all the books should be in the same editions. The 
same methods will make knowledge real and sterling. 
Also for this purpose children must be taught as far as 
possible, not from books, but from heaven and earth, 
oaks and beeches. The studies of the whole life must 
be so arranged as to form an encyclopaedia of knowledge. 
We must learn in such a way as to be able to communi- 
cate what we know. Ask much, retain what you are 
told, teach what you have retained. Mult a roga, retine 
docta, retenta doce. A man who teaches another teaches 
himself. 

Class Methods. — To learn shortly and quickly you 
must pursue the following methods. Have one teacher 
for each class; a teacher with improved methods can 
teach a large number. For this purpose Comenius 
recommends methods many of which have become 



76 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

familiar to us. (1) Dividing the class into bodies of 
ten, each with a prefect. (2) Teaching nothing that is 
not heard and understood by all. (3) A previous ex- 
planation of the general subject of the teaching. (4) 
The teacher to be so placed that he can command the 
whole class. (5) Passing a question down the form from 
one to the other. (6) Allowing the children to ask any 
questions when school is over. (7) If no one answers a 
question to ask the whole class, and to praise the one 
who answers right. It is well to have uniform school 
books arranged in question and answer, with extracts on 
the walls. Comenius laid such stress on the importance 
of a carefully arranged programme that in Hungary he 
only received scholars once a year. Primers expressed 
in short, simple language are useful. Combine the teach- 
ing of things with that of words, matter with style, 
learning with play. Avoid teaching what is useless, or 
matters of too special a character. 

The Kinds of Schools. — Comenius goes on to describe 
at length the methods of teaching the sciences and the 
arts, languages, morals and piety. But it will be better 
to pass at once to a sketch of the arrangements of the 
reformed school. He contemplates when his system is 
complete the entire banishment of heathen writers from 
his curriculum. For discipline he adduces the example 
of the sun, which gives us light and warmth always, 
rain and wind often, thunder and lighting seldom. 
Comenius establishes four classes of schools : (1) the 
mother's school in every house ; (2) the national school 
in every parish ; (3) the gymnasium in every large town ; 
(4) the university in every country or large province. 
In the lower grade of schools things are to be taught 



THE MOTHER'S SCHOOL. yy 

generally and in outline, and in the higher schools more 
in detail and more completely. The mother^s school is 
to cultivate the external senses ; the national school, the 
internal senses, imagination and memory, hand and 
tongue ; the gymnasium, understanding and judgment ; 
the university, the will. All children of both sexes are 
to attend the two first schools ; the gymnasium is for 
those who are not destined for manual employment ; the 
university is to train the future teachers and leaders of 
the community. 

The Mother's School. — The mother^s school is to 
teach the first beginnings of many things, things quite 
simple in themselves which we are accustomed to call 
by very hard names. A child in its earliest infancy will 
learn the simplest notions of metaphysics in the ideas, 
somxcthing, nothing, it is, it is not, where, when, like, 
and unlike ;^of physics, in the knowledge of water, earth, 
air, fire, rain, snow, ice, stones, iron, tree, plant, etc. ; of 
optics, in the knowledge of light, darkness, • shadow, 
color, etc. ; of astronomy, in the knowledge* of heaven, 
sun, moon, stars, and their daily motions. In the same 
manner he will learn a little geography, chronology, his- 
tory, arithmetic, geometry, statics, mechanics, dialectics, 
grammar, rhetoric, the art of poetry, domestic economy, 
a very little politics, and ethics. Moreover the child in 
these first six years will learn moderation, cleanliness, 
veneration, obedience, truthfulness, justice, love, with 
silence, patience, serviceableness, propriety, and religion. 
Comenius proposes to write a book for mothers, and a 
picture book for the instruction of children. 

The National School. — The national school is to be a 
school of the mother tongue. It is absurd to learn a for- 



78 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 



eign language before you know your own. This school 
will teach reading, writing, arithmetic, measuring, sing- 
ing, the Bible, histor}^, and physical geography, and, 
lastly, the principal handicrafts. The course will be 
spread over six years, and be taught in six classes. Books 
are to be written for each class, the earlier containing the 
general principles, the later the particulars. These 
books are to be called by fancy names : the violet bed, 
the rose hedge, the grass plot. The school hours are to 
be four only, two before and two after the midday meal ; 
the morning hours are to be devoted to the understand- 
ing and memory, the afternoon to the practice of the 
hand and voice. Nothing new is to be taught in the 
afternoon. 

The Latin school, the next stage, is to consists of six 
classes, and to occupy the years from twelve to eighteen. 
The classes are arranged in the following order : Cl) 
grammar ; (2) physics ; (3) mathematics ; (4) ethics ; 
(5) dialectics ; (6) rhetoric. The sciences themselves 
are to be taught in the morning, the history of them in 
the afternoon. The crown of the whole system is the 
university, in which all sciences are to be taught. 

A Wonderful Reform. — How striking and how power- 
ful is the reform of education here proposed ! How 
much more so must it have been in the age of Oomenius I 
Many of his suggestions have become commonplaces to 
ourselves, but many of them as we read them pour a new 
light upon our minds, and seem to us the expression of 
an idea which has long been darkly sensible. The more 
we reflect on the method of Oomenius, the more shall 
we see that it is replete with suggestiveness, and we shall 
feel surprised that so much wisdom can have lain in the 



ANAL YSIS. 79 



path of schoolmasters for two hundred and fifty years, 
and that they have never stooped to avail themselves of 
its treasures. 



ANALYSIS OF CHAPTER IV. 

PAGE 

Defects of the Humanists 61 

Bacon's Ideas 61 

Ratke or Ratich 63 

His Ideas 64 

Method iu Language 65 

His Aphorisms 65 

Comenius 67 

His Ideas 69 

Proposes to follow Nature 70 

Analysis of His System 70 

His Idea of the School , 71 

How Education can Aid 72 

Rules of Education 73 

How the Child is to be Educated . 74 

Practical Suggestions 75 

Class Methods 75 

The Kinds of Schools 76 

The Mother's School 77 

The National School 77 

A Wonderful Reform 78 



8o IlDucational theories. 



THE NATURALISTS— RABELAIS AND MON- 
TAIGNE. 

Defects of both Realists and Humanists. — The kinds 
of education described in the two last chapters are edu- 
cations of system. Their object is to make the scholar 
and the man of learning, although in one case the basis 
is clerical, in the other modern. Each of these methods 
would be severely criticised by the man of the world ; 
whether a child were educated by the humanists or the 
realists, it would appear to men of action that the 
schools had too much the best of it. The result in 
either case would rather be to form the student than the 
man fitted to take his part in the battle of life. We 
should, therefore, expect to find, side by side with these 
two directions of thought about education, a third, the 
object of which was to form the whole man, and which, 
although it did not neglect either letters or sciences, was 
inclined to believe that these might be learned without 
a parade of pedantic learning, and without interfering 
with the free growth of the man's nature. 

The Naturalists. — This school of educationalists may 
conveniently be called by the name of naturalists, not 
only because they professed to follow nature as much 
as Comenius, but because they set before themselves 
as the chief good the development of the entire nature, 



THE EDUCATION OF kA BEL A IS' TIME. 8 1 

and not merely the intellect or any part of it. The 
principal representatives of this school are Rabelais 
and Montaigne. The second of these is more entirely 
a naturalist than the first, but they are closely connected 
together, and although Rabelais loads his scheme of 
ideal education with useless learning, yet it is easy to 
see that his fundamental principle is the formation of 
the character and the training of a versatile and accom- 
plished gentleman. 

Rabelais' Description of the Education of his Time. — 
The attitude of Rabelais toward the education of his 
time is shown by his description of the evil training of 
his hero Gargantua before it was reformed under his 
direction. He says' (Book I. chap, xi.), *^^ Gargantua 
from three years upward until five was brought up and 
instructed in all convenient discipline by the command- 
ment of his father, and spent that time like the other 
little children of the country, that is, in drinking, eating, 
and sleeping, in eating, sleeping, and drinking, and in 
sleeping, drinking, and eating. About the end of his fifth 
year Grandgousier, his father, became convinced from a 
conversation with him that his understanding did j^ar- 
take of some divinity, and that if he were well taught 
and had a fitting education he would attain to a supreme 
degree of wisdom, ^ therefore I will commit him to some 
learned man to have him indoctrinated according to his 
capacity, and will spare no cost/ Presently they ap- 
pointed him a great sophister-doctor, called Master 



' Rabelais is so little suited for the reading of ordinary students 
that I have thought it best to quote nearly all he says about 
education. 



EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 



Tubal Holofernes, who tauglit him his A B so well, 
that he could say it by heart backward, and about this 
he was five years and three months. Then read he to 
him Dnatus (a grammar), Facetus, Theodoletus, and 
Alanus, ^ De Parabolis ' (who were moral writers) ; about 
this he was thirteen years six months and two weeks. 
But you must remark that in the mean time he did learn 
to write in Gothic characters, and that he wrote all his 
books — for the art of printing was not then in use — 
and did ordinarily carry a great pen and inkhorn weigh- 
ing about seven thousand quintals, etc. After that he 
read unto him the book called ^ De Modis Significandi,^ 
with the commentaries of Hurtbise, of Fasquin, of 
Tropdieux, of Gaulhault, of Jehan le Veau, Billonio, 
Berlinguandus, and others, wherein he spent more than 
eighteen years and eleven months, and was so well versed 
in it that to try masteries in school disputes with his 
con-disciples he would recite it by heart backward, and 
did sometimes prove on his finger ends to his mother, 
'quod de modis significandi non erat scientia.'' Then 
did he read to hiiii the compost for knowing the age of 
the moon, the seasons of the year, and the tides of the 
sea, on which he spent sixteen years and two months, 
and just at this time his preceptor died, in the year 
1420. Afterward he got an old coughing fellow to teach 
him, named Master Jobelin Bride, who read unto him 
Hiigutio Hebrard's Gra^cism, the Doctrinale (a Latin 
grammar), the Partes, the Quid est, the Supplementum, 
Marmotret (an introduction to the Bible), ' De moribus 
in mensa servandis,^ Seneca, ^De quatuor vitutibus car- 
dinalibus,^ Passavantus cum commento, a Dormi secure 
for the feast-days, and some other of such like mealy 



THE EDUCATION OF RABELAIS' TIME. 83 

stuff, by reading whereof he became as wise as any we 
ever since baked in an oven. 

^' At last his father perceived that indeed he studied 
hard, and that although he spent all his time in it he 
did nevertheless profit nothing, but, what is worse, grew 
thereby foolish, simple, doted, and blockish, whereof 
making a heavy regret to Don Philip of Marays, Viceroy 
or Depute King of Papaligosse, he found that it were 
better for him to learn nothing at all, than to be taught 
such like books under such schoolmasters, because their 
knowledge was nothing but brutishness, and their wis- 
dom but blunt, foppish toys, seeming only to bastardize 
good and noble spirits, and to corrupt all the flower of 
youth. * That it is so, take,^ said he, ' any young boy 
of this time who hath only studied two years, if he have 
not a better judgment, a better discourse, and that ex- 
pressed in better terms than your son, with a completer 
courage and civility to all manner of persons, account me 
forever hereafter a very clounch.^ This pleased Grand- 
gousier very well, and he commanded that it should be 
done. At night, at supper, the said Des Marays brought 
in a young page of his called Eudemon, so neat, so trim, 
so handsome in his apparel, so spruce, with his hair in so 
good order and so sweet and comely in his behavior, that 
he had the resemblance of a little angel more than of 
a human creature. Then he said to Grandgousier, ^Do 
you see this young boy? He is not as yet full twelve 
years old. Let us try, if it please you, what difference 
there is between the knowledge of the doting mateolo- 
gians of old time and the young lads that are now/ 
The trial pleased Grandgousier, and he commanded the 
page to begin. Then Eudemon, asking leave of the 



§4 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

Viceroy, his master, so to do, witli his cap in his hand, 
a clear and open countenance, beautiful and ruddy lips, 
his eyes steady, and his looks fixed on Gargantua, with 
a youthful modesty, standing up straight on his feet, 
began very gracefully to commend him, first for his vir- 
tue and good manners, secondly for his knowledge, 
thirdly for his nobility, fourthly for his bodily accom- 
plishments, and, in the fifth place, most sweetly ex- 
horted him to reverence his father with all due observ- 
ancy, who was so careful to have him well brought up. 
All this was by him delivered with such proper gestures, 
such distinct pronunciation, so pleasant a delivery, in 
such exquisite fine terms and so good Latin, that he 
seemed either a Gracchus, a Cicero, an ^milius, of the 
time past than a youth of this age. But all the coun- 
tenance that Gargantua kept was that he fell to crying 
like a cow, and cast down his face, hiding it with his 
cap, nor could they possibly draw one word from him, 
whereat his father was so grievously vexed that he would 
have killed Master Jobelin, but the said Des Marays 
withheld him from it by fair persuasions, so that length 
he pacified his wrath. ^' So Jobelin was paid his wages 
and sent about his business, and Grandgousier, having 
consulted with the Viceroy, determined to choose for 
Gargantua, Ponocrates, the tutor of Eudemon, and so 
they set out for Paris together. 

^'When they first arrived at Paris, Ponocrates allowed 
him to go on his own way in order that he might see 
how he had been brought up by his previous instructor. 
He found that he awoke between eight and nine o'clock, 
spent a long time tumbling and tossing in bed, washed 
and dressed himself untidily, eat a large breakfast im- 



TBE EDUCATION- OF RABELaIS* TIME. B5 

mediately afterward^ went to church, studied a paltry 
half-hour, eat again to excess, and then played with cards 
and dice, checkers and chessboards. After this he drank, 
went to sleep, and drank again, then he studied a little 
and played. Shortly after followed supper, then more 
games and then bed, where he slept soundly till eight 
in the morning/^ When Ponocrates knew Gargantua's 
vicious manner of living, he resolved to bring him up in 
another kind, but for a while he bore with him, consid- 
ering that nature cannot endure such a change without 
great violence ; so he began by purging him with Anti- 
cyrian hellebore, by which medicine he cleansed all the 
alteration and perverse habitude of his brain. By this 
means also Ponocrates made him forget all that he had 
learned under his ancient preceptors. He then began a 
new method of study, so that he lost not any one hour 
in the day, but employed all his time in learning and 
honest knowledge. 

" Gargantua awaked about four o^clock in the morning. 
While they were rubbing of him there was read unto 
him some chapters of the Holy Scripture, aloud and 
clearly, with a pronunciation fit for the matter. His 
prayers had reference to the purpose and argument of 
that lesson. His master re]3eated to him what had been 
read, expounding the most obscure and difficult points. 
Then they considered the face of the sky, if it was such 
as they had observed the night before, and into what 
sign the sun was entering, as also the moon for that day. 
Then he was dressed, and the lessons of the day before 
were repeated to him. Then for three good hours he 
had a lecture read unto him. Then they went to play 
in the fields, still conferring on the subject of the lee- 



86 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

ture, most gallantly exercising their bodies^ as they had 
formerly done their minds. They left off when they 
were tired, and then returned to dinner. The dinner 
was made an occasion for teaching the nature of every- 
thing that was served at it, of bread, wine, water, salt, 
fleshes, fishes, fruits, herbs, roots, and of their dressing, 
the passages in ancient authors referring to them being 
read and learned. After dinner they conferred of the 
lessons read in the morning, and then cards were brought 
in, not to play, but to learn a thousand pretty tricks and 
new inventions, which were all grounded upon arith- 
metic. By this means he fell in love with that numerical 
science, and every day, after dinner and supper, he 
passed his time in it as pleasantly as he was wont to do 
at cards and dice. And not only in that, but in the 
other mathematical sciences, as geometry, astronomy, 
music, etc. For in attending the digestion of his food, 
they made a thousand pretty instruments and geomet- 
rical figures, and did in some measure practise the geo- 
metrical canons. Then they sang and played for an 
hour." And, '^digestion finished, he betook himself to 
his principal study for three hours together or more, as 
well as to repeat his matutinal lectures, as to proceed in 
the book wherein he was, also to write handsomely, to draw 
and form the antique and Roman letters." Then he 
went to the riding school and practised every feat of arms 
on horse and on foot. The list of bodily exercises which 
Gargantua performed is given with the usual exuberance 
of Rabelais. It comprises every exercise practised by 
modern athletes, and many more besides. In returning, 
his attention was directed to ^'^all the plants and trees, 
and to what is written of them by the ancients." Being 



RABELAIS' IDEAS. 87 

come to their lodging, while supper was making ready, 
they repeated certain passages of that which had been 
read, and then sat down at table. Here remark that his 
dinner was sober and thrifty, for he did then eat only to 
prevent the gna wings of his stomach, but his supper was 
copious and large. During that repast was continued 
the lesson read at dinner, as long as they thought good ; 
the rest was spent in good discourse, learned and profit- 
able. Then, after music and games, they went to bed. 
^* When it was full night, before they retired themselves, 
they went into the most open place of the house to see 
the face of the sky, and there beheld the comets, if any 
were, as likewise the figures, situations, aspects, opposi- 
tions and conjunctions of both the fixed stars and planets. 
Then, with his master, did he briefly recapitulate, after 
the manner of the Pythagoreans, that which he had 
read, seen, learned, done, and understood in the whole 
course of that day. Then prayed they unto God their 
Creator, in falling down before Him, and strengthening 
their faith toward Him, and glorifying Him for His 
boundless bounty ; and, giving thanks unto Him for the 
time that was past, they recommended themselves to 
His divine clemency for the future, which being done, 
they went to bed, and betook themselves to their repose 
and rest." In rainy weather they stayed indoors and 
recreated themselves with the ^^ bottling up of hay, cleav- 
ing of wood, and thrashing sheaves of corn at the barn." 
They visited all kinds of trades, heard lectures, plead- 
ings, and sermons. Once a month they took a holiday 
in the beautiful country near Paris. 

His Ideas. — What is the practical advice to be derived 
from this? First a sensible tutor must be chosen. 



EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 



Rabelais shows no favor to public education. The hard 
work is about six hours a day. During the morning 
hours of study the pupil is to be lectured to ; there is 
no talk of learning by heart. Great stress is laid upon 
physical exercise. Teaching is done by the personal in- 
fluence of the tutor, and only subordinately through 
books. Natural objects are made use of as far as pos- 
sible. The chief points on which Rabelais insists have 
been thus summed up by Arnstiidt :' (1) Teaching 
through the senses. (2) Independence of thought. (3) 
Training for practical life. (4) Equal development of 
mind and body. (5) Gentle treatment, and improved 
methods. In Gargantua^s education there is no men- 
tion of punishment. Although by his insistence on the 
importance of learning things, Rabelais belongs to the 
realists, yet we shall see that he exercised a predominant 
influence on Locke and Rousseau, who are the principal 
advocates of naturalistic education. 

Such were Rabelais" methods. The end which he 
proposed to himself to reach is set forth in a letter from 
Gargantua to his son Pantagruel, which, although it is 
possibly of earlier composition than the passages we 
have quoted, comes more properly after the narration of 
Gargantua^s youth. '^ Although my deceased father of 
happy memory, Grandgousier, had used his best en- 
deavors to make me profit in all perfection and political 
knowledge, and that my labor and study was fully cor- 
respondent to, yea, and went beyond, his desire, never- 
theless the time was not so proper and fit for learning as 
it is at present, neither had I plenty of such good mas- 

^ Fran9ois Rabelais und sein Traite d'education. Leipzig, 1873. 



RABELAIS' IDEAS. 89 

ters as thou liast had. For that time was darksome, 
obscured with clouds of ignorance, and savoring a little 
of that infelicity and calamity of the Goths, who had 
wherever they set footing destroyed all good literature, 
which in my age hath by the divine goodness been re- 
stored unto its former light and dignity ; that amend- 
ment and increase of knowledge that now hardly should 
I be admitted to the first form of the little grammar 
school boys. I say, I, who in my youthful days was and 
that justly reputed the most learned of my age. Now 
it is that the minds of men are qualified with all manner 
of discipline, and the old sciences revived which for ma*ny 
ages were extinct. Now it is that the learned languages 
are to their pristine purity restored, namely, Greek, 
without which a man may be ashamed to count himself 
a scholar, Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldean, and Latin. Print- 
ing likewise is now in use, so elegant, and so correct that 
better cannot be imagined, although it was found out in 
my time by a divine inspiration, as by a diabolical sug- 
gestion on the other side was the invention of ordnance. 
All the world is full of most knowing men, of most 
learned schoolmasters, and vast libraries, and it appears 
to me as a truth that neither in Plato's time, nor Cicero's, 
nor Papinian's, there was ever such conveniency for 
studying as we see at this day there is. Nor must any 
adventure to come in public or present himself in com- 
pany that hath not been pretty well polished in the 
shop of Minerva. I see robbers, hangmen, freebooters, 
tapsters, cobblers, and such like, of the very rubbish of 
the people, more learned now than the doctors and 
preachers were in niy time. . . . The very women and 
children have aspired to this praise and celestial manner 



90 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

of good learning. . . . Wherefore, my son, I admonish 
thee to employ thy youth to profit as well as thou canst, 
hoth in thy studies and in virtue/^ 

His Course of Study. — ^'\ intend and will have it so 
that thou learn the languages perfectly, first of all the 
Greek, as Quintilian will have it, secondly the Latin, 
and then the Hebrew for the Holy Scriptures^ sake, and 
then the Chaldee and Arabic likewise, and that thou 
frame thy style in Greek after the manner of Plato, in 
Latin after that of Cicero. Let there be no history 
which thou shalt not have ready in thy memory, unto 
the prosecuting of which design books of cosmography 
will be very condiicible, and help thee much. Of the 
liberal arts of geometry, arithmetic, and music, I gave 
thee some taste when thou wast yet little and not above 
five or six years old. Proceed further in them and learn 
the remainder if thou canst. As for astronomy, study 
all the rules thereof. Let pass nevertheless the divining 
and judicial astronomy and the art of Lullius, as being 
nothing else but plain abuses and vanities. As for the 
civil law, of that I would have thee to know the texts by 
heart, and then to compare them with philosophy. Now 
in the matter of the knowledge of the works of nature, 
I would have thee to study that exactly ; that so there 
be no sea, river, nor fountain of which thou dost not 
know the fishes, all the fowls of the air, all the several 
kinds of shrubs and trees whether in forests or orchards, 
all the sorts of herbs and flowers that grow on the 
ground, all the various metals that are hid within the 
bowels of the earth, together with all the diversity of 
precious stones that are to be seen in the orient and 
south parts of the world. Let nothing of all these be 



MONTAIGNE. 9 1 



hidden from thee. Then fail not most carefully to per- 
use the books of the Greek, Arabian, and Latin physi- 
cians, not despising the Talmudists and Cabalists, and 
by frequent anatomies get the perfect knowledge of that 
other world called the microcosm, which is man. And 
at some of the hours of the day apply thy mind to the 
study of the Holy Scriptures, first, in Grreek_, the New 
Testament with the Epistles of the Apostles, and then 
the Old Testament in Hebrew. In brief let me see thee 
an abyss and bottomless pit of knowledge, for from 
henceforth as thou growest great and becometh a man, 
thou must part from this tranquillity and rest of study, 
thou must learn chivalry, warfare, and the exercises of 
the field, the better thereby to defend my house and our 
friends, and to succor and protect them at all their 
needs against the invasions and assaults of evil doers/^ 
This letter is very properly dated from Utopia. It is a 
mixture of jest and earnest, and in it Rabelais may be 
seen "laughing in his easy chair^^ at the polymaths of 
his age. If the dates allowed it might be considered as 
a satire on Milton's Tractate. 

Montaigne. — The second great vindicator of natural- 
istic education, Montaigne, is more outspoken and more 
consistent. One of his longest essays is entitled '' On 
the Education of Children," and is addressed to Madame 
Diane de Foix,\ Countess of Guerson. In other essays 
he touches on the same topic ; in the essay on '' pedan- 
try, '^ in that on "anger,'' in that on "books," in that 
on "the affections of fathers to their children." Al- 
though his precepts are not systematic, and are thrown 
out rather as hints for reflection, yet there is no doubt 
that they exercised a very important influence both upon 



92 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

Locke and Eousseau. Like Eabelais lie was profoundly 
dissatisfied with the pedantry of his time. *^To what 
use serves learning if the understanding be away/^ He 
says of the scholars of the age, ' * Whosoever shall nar- 
rowly pry into and thoroughly sift this sort of people, 
wherewith the world is so pestered, will, as I have done, 
find that for the most part they neither understand others 
nor themselves, and that their memories are full enough 
it is true, but the judgment totally devoid and empty.'' 
The dialectic of that age stuffed the heads of its pupils 
full of barren knowledge, ill digested, which weighed 
down the mind without developing it. Philosophy had 
hardened into a number of dry formula whiah were to 
be learned by heart, and as Montaigne says, ^^ S9avoir 
par coeur n'est pas s9avoir." To learn by rote is no true 
knowledge. He is particularly alive to the danger of 
useless erudition. ^^ Too much learning stifles the soul 
Just as plants are stifled by too much moisture, and 
lamps by too much oil. Our pedants plunder knowledge 
from books and carry it on the tip of their lips, just as 
birds carry seeds to feed their young. The cares and ex- 
pense our parents are at in our education point at noth- 
ing but to furnish our heads with knowledge ; but not 
a word of judgment or virtue. We only toil and labor 
to stuff the memory, but leave the conscience and under- 
standing unfurnished and void.'^ 

The Object of Education. — The object of education in 
Montaigne's view must be to form the man. Before we 
are lawyers, doctors, merchants, and professors, we must 
be men. He tells a story how, going one day to Orleans, 
he met two pedants travelling toward Bordeaux about 
fifty paces distant from one another, and a good way 



WHAT THE TEACHER SHOULD BE. 93 

further behind them he discovered a troop of horse with 
a gentleman in the head of them, namely the Comte de 
Rochefoucauld. One of his people inquired of the fore- 
most of these Dominies who that gentleman was that 
came after him, who, thinking he meant his companion, 
pleasantly answered, '^ He is not a gentleman, sire, he is 
a grammarian, and I am a logician." Our object, says 
Montaigne, is to breed not a grammarian or a logician, 
but a complete gentleman. 

What the Teacher Should Be. — For this purpose, the 
first thing is to find a good tutor, because upon the choice 
of him depends the whole manner of your education. 
He should rather have an elegant than a learned head, 
and his manners and his judgment are of more import- 
ance than his reading. The duty of the tutor will be to 
study the disposition of his pupil, yet this should not be 
carried too far; '^ they ought to be elemented in the best 
and most advantageous studies, without taking too much 
notice of, or being too superstitious in, those light prog- 
nostics they give of themselves in their tender years." 
The tutor is *^ not to force knowledge into the pupil's 
ears as into a funnel, but is to put his capacity to the 
test, permitting his pupil himself to taste and relish 
things, and of himself to choose and discern them, some- 
times opening the way to him and sometimes making him 
to break the ice himself ; that is, I would not leave him 
alone to invent and speak, but that he should also hear 
his pupil speak in turn." This cannot be done in large 
schools, where masters are expected with one and the 
same teaching to instruct several boys of so different and 
unequal capacities. " At this rate it is no wonder if, in 
the multitude of scholars, there are not found above two 



94 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

or three who bring away any good account of their time 
and discipline. In examining the pnpil, ji-^dge of the 
profit he has made not by the testimony of his memory 
but by that of his understanding. Let him make him put 
what he hath learned into a hundred several forms^, and 
accommodate it to so many several subjects, to see if he 
yet rightly comprehend it and have made it his own. Let 
him make him examine and thoroughly sift everything 
he reads, and lodge nothing in his fancy upon simple 
authority and upon trust. That which a man rightly 
understands he is the free disposer of at his own full 
liberty, without any regard to the author, whence he 
had it, or fumbling over the leaves of his book." 

He Recommends Travelling. — Montaigne recommends 
as means of education conversation with men, and travel 
into foreign countries, '''not to learn useless minutiae of 
antiquity, but to be able chiefly to give an account of 
the humors, manners, customs, and laws of those na- 
tions where he has been." A boy should be sent abroad 
very young, and into those neighboring nations whose 
tongue is most differing from his own. 

Also Physical Exercises. — He advises a hardiness of 
bringing up. Mothers are too tender, and do not cor- 
rect their children sufficiently, or allow them to undergo 
the hardships necessary for their training; ''they would 
not endure to see them return all dust and sweat from 
their exercise, to drink cold water when they are hot, 
nor see them mount an unruly horse, nor take a foil in 
hand against a rude fencer, or so much as to discharge 
a carbine, and yet there is no remedy. Whoever will 
wish a boy to be good for anything when he comes to be 
a man must by no means spare him, even when so 



MONTAIGNE'S RECOMMENDATIONS. 95 

young, and must very often transgress the rules of 
physic,/ It is not enough to fortify his soul, you are 
also to make his sinews strong. Our very exercises and 
recreations — running, wrestling, music, dancing, hunt- 
ing, riding, and fencing — will have to be a good part of 
our study. '^I would have his outward fashion and 
mien, and the disposition of his limbs, formed at the 
same time with his mind. ^Tis not a soul, "tis not a 
body that we are training up, but a man, and we ought 
not to divide him.^^ 

Also Elegant Manners. — ^'^In this intercourse with 
men, the pupil is not to become forward and imperti- 
nent, but to cultivate silence and modesty. He is to 
argue with self-restraint, and to learn to acquiesce, and 
submit to truth as soon as he discovers it, either in his 
opponent's argument, or on better consideration of his 
own. He is also to have implanted in him the honest 
curiosity of being inquisitive after everything, and 
whatever there is of singular and rare near the place 
where he shall reside, he shall go and see it — a fine house, 
a delicate fountain, an eminent man, the place where 
a battle has been anciently fought, and the passages of 
Caesar and Charlemagne. '^ 

Also History. — The main study for a gentleman is the 
intelligent study of history. The manners, revenues, 
and alliances of princes, the great and heroic souls of 
former and better ages; ''^not the date of the fall of 
Carthage, but the behavior of Hannibal and Scipio; not 
where Marcellus died, so much as why he died there; 
not so much the narrative part, as the business of his- 
tory. To some history is a mere grammar study, to 
others it is the very anatomy of philosophy, by which 



96 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 



the most secret and abstruse parts of onr nature are 
penetrated into. Whoever shall represent to his fancy 
that great image of our mother Nature portrayed in her 
full majesty and lustre, whoever shall observe himself in 
that figure, and not himself but a whole kingdom, no 
bigger than the least touch or prick of a pencil in com- 
parison of the whole, that man alone is able to value 
things according to their true estimate and grandeur. 
The great world is the mirror wherein we are to behold 
ourselves, to be able to know ourselves as we ought to 
do. I would have this to be the book my young gentle- 
man should study with the most attention." 

Other Studies. — ^^ After having taught him what will 
make him more wise and good, you may then entertain 
him with the elements of logic, physics, geometry, and 
rhetoric, and the science which he shall then himself 
most incline to, his judgment being beforehand formed 
and fit to choose, he will quickly make his own. 

The Method of Teaching. — '^The way of instructing 
him ought to be sometimes by discourse, and sometimes 
by reading. Sometimes his tutor shall put the author 
himself which he shall think most profitable for him 
into his hands, and sometimes only the manner and sub- 
stance of it, and if he himself be not conversant enough 
in books to turn to all the fine discourses the book con- 
tains, then may some man of learning be joined to him, 
that upon every occasion shall supply him with what he 
desires and stands in need of to recommend to his pu- 
pil." Above all, education should be cheerful. The 
pupil is not to be imprisoned, or made a slave to his 
book. He is not to be given up to the morosity or 
melancholic humor of a sour, ill-natured pedant. His 



MONTAIGNE'S METHOD OF TEACHING. 97 

spirit is not to be cowed and subdued by applying him 
to the rack, and tormenting him fourteen or fifteen 
hours a day, and so make a pack-liorse of him. ^*^How 
many have I seen in my time totally brutified by an im- 
moderate thirst after knowledge." 

Montaigne speaks with horror of the severity of the 
colleges of his time. ^' ^Tis the house of correction for 
imprisoned youth. Do but come in when they are 
about their lessons, and you shall hear nothing but the 
outcry of boys under execution, with the thundering 
noise of their pedagogues drunk with fury.^^ George 
Buchanan, one of Montaigne^s preceptors, has left us a 
similar picture. ^^ Away with this violence! away with 
this compulsion! than which I certainly believe nothing 
more dolls and degenerates a well-descended nature. 
If you would have him apprehend shame and chastise- 
ment, do not harden him to them. Inure him to heat 
and cold, to wind and sun, and to dangers that he ought 
to despise. Wean him from all effeminacy and delicacy 
in clothes and lodging, eating and drinking. Accustom 
him to everything, that he may not be a Sir Paris and 
carpet-knight, but a sinewy, hardy, and vigorous young 
man. I have ever, from a child to the age I now am, 
been of this opinion, and am still constant to it.^' 

From this sketch of Montaigne's opinions, it will be 
easily seen how he found a follower in Locke, and how 
his lessons passed from Locke into our English schools. 
But we must remember that he naturally emphasizes the 
side of education which in his own day was much neg- 
lected. If he wishes his pupil not to grow up a pedant, 
he does not wish him to grow up an ignoramus. He 
commends the care taken by his father with his own 



98 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

education, and laments the time he wasted at the col- 
lege of Guienne. In our own day it will do little harm 
to obey his precepts of practical education, if we also 
take care to grasp his conception of the intellectual fur- 
niture with which a statesman should be equipped. 



ANALYSIS OF CHAPTER V. 

PAGE 

Defects of both Realists and Humanists 80 

The Naturalists 80 

Rabelais' Description of the Education of his Time .... 81 

His Ideas 87 

His Course of Study 90 

Montaigne 91 

The Object of Education 92 

What the Teacher Should Be 93 

He Recommends Travelling 94 

Also Physical Exercises 94 

Also Elegant Manners 95 

Also History 95 

Other Studies 96 

The Method of Teaching 9G 



ENGLISH REALISTS AND NATURALISTS. 99 



ENGLISH HUMANISTS AND REALISTS-ROGER 
ASCHAM AND JOHN MILTON, 

English Realists and Naturalists. — In the three preced- 
ing chapters we have given an account of the three prin- 
cipal schools of educationists, which continue to divide 
us bytheir controversies even at the present day: the Hu- 
manists, the Realists, and the Naturalists. But the ex- 
amples chosen to illustrate them have been drawn en- 
tirely from foreign countries. The first two schools 
have been represented by Germans, the last by French- 
men. In this chapter and the following one we propose 
to give an account of the English representatives of those 
different schools of thought, Ascham, Milton, and Locke. 
The importance of the first has probably been overrated, 
the opinions of the second are imperfectly known, while 
the third has given a powerful bias to naturalistic educa- 
tion, both in England and on the Continent, for the last 
two hundred years. 

Roger Ascham. — Roger Ascham was born in 1516. 
He entered St. John's College, Cambridge, in the year 
1530, a well-grounded boy of fourteen. Stimulated by 
the seven years' activity of Erasmus, Cambridge was 
then in a very flourishing condition, and was regarded 
as the principal place of study for the classical languages. 
Ascham threw himself vigorously into the study of Greek. 



100 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

He lectured publicly on this language, and succeeded 
Sir John Cheke as public orator. His ^' Toxophilus, or 
Praise of Archery/^ written at the age of thirty, is one 
of the first works composed in pure English. This work 
attracted the notice of the Court, and from the time of 
its publication till his death in 1568, Ascham was, with 
few intermissions, employed, either about the Court or 
on foreign missions. He was Greek tutor to Queen 
Elizabeth. He had taught her Latin when princess, 
and was her constant and favored companion. His 
views on education are contained in a book called the 
• ^ Scholemaster. '^ ' 

Ascham's " Scholemaster." — His account of the occasion 
of its composition is very interesting. He says that 
when the Great Plague was at London in the year 1563, 
the Court lay at Windsor, and it happened on December 
10th that Ascham and others of the household were 
dining together in Sir William Cecil's chamber. "Not 
long after our sitting down, ^ I have strange news 
brought me,' saith Mr. Secretary, ^this morning, that 
divers scholars of Eton ran away from the school for fear 
of a beating.' Whereupon Mr. Secretary took occasion 
to Avish that some discretion were in many schoolmasters 
in using correction than commonly there is, who many 
times punish rather the weakness of nature than the 
fault of the scholar, whereby many scholars, that might 
else prove well, be driven to hate learning before they 
know what learning meaneth ; and so are made willing 
to forsake their book, and to be willing to be put to any 

' The best edition of tbe " Scholemaster" is that by Professor 
Mayor of Cambridge. Milton's tractate should be reprinted in a 
separate form. 



ASCHAM's '' scholemaster:' ioi 

other kind of living. On this a discussion arose. Mr. 
Peter, as one somewhat severe of nature, said plainly 
that the rod only was the sword that must keep the 
school in obedience, and the scholars in good order. Mr. 
Wotton (not to be confounded with the famous Provost 
of Eton), ^ a man mild of nature, with soft voice and few 
words,' inclined to Mr. Secretary's judgment, and said, 
' In mine opinion, the school-house should be indeed, as 
it is called in name, the house of play and pleasure and 
not of fear and bondage, and therefore if a rod carry 
the fear of a sword, it is not marvel if those that be 
fearful of nature choose rather to forsake the play than 
to stand always within the fear of a sword in a fond 
man's handling.' Mr. Mason, after his manner, was 
very merry with both -vparties, pleasantly playing, both 
with the shrewd touches of many curst boys, and with 
the small discretion of many lewd schoolmasters. Mr. 
Hadden was fully of Mr. Peter's opinion, and said that 
the best schoolmaster of our time was the greatest beater, 
and named the person (Nicholas Udal, Head-master of 
Eton). ^ Though,' quoth I, ^it was his good fortune to 
send from his school to the University one of the best 
scholars, indeed, of all our time, yet wise men do think 
that came to pass rather by the great towardness of the 
scholar, 'than by the great beating of the master, and 
whether this be true or no, you yourself are best wit- 
ness.' In this conversation Sir Richard Sackville said 
nothing at all." But after dinner Ascham went up to 
read with the Queen's Majesty. "We read then to- 
gether, in the Greek tongue, as I well remember, that 
noble oration of Demosthenes against ^schines for his 
false dealing in his embassage to King Philip of Mace- 



102 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

donie. Sir Eichard Sackville came up soon after, and 
finding me in Her Majesty's privy chamber, lie took me 
by the hand, and, carrying me to a window, said that he 
w^ould not for a good deal of money have been this day 
absent from dinner, that he lamented his own beating in 
his youth, and determined to adopt a different method 
with his grandson." As Ascham had a son much of his 
grandson's age, he asked him to choose a schoolmaster 
who should educate the two boys together, and that he 
would pay for both. They tlien conversed on the gen- 
eral subject of education for some time, and Sackville 
asked Ascham to put down his views in a book. Ascham 
was suddenly called to the Queen. The night following 
he slept but little, and he determined to write a little 
treatise for the new year, but the work rose daily higher 
and wider than he expected. The book was not finished 
for some little time afterward. 

His Method of Teaching. — The first part of the work 
is entitled '' The bringing up of Youth," and the main 
lesson in it is that gentleness is to be used in education 
in preference to severity. In the second book, entitled 
^' The ready way to the Latin Tongue," Ascham explains 
his method at length. First the simple rules of acci- 
dence are to be learned in the grammar. Then Sturm's 
Epistles of Cicero is to be taken as a text-book. The 
master is to follow in some respects the method of 
Ratich. He is to explain the meaning of each epistle, 
to construe it to the child in English, to parse it over 
perfectly. This done, the child is to construe and parse 
it over again until he knows it. Then he is to take a 
paper book and write out by himself the translation of 
the lesson in English ; then, when this has been cor- 



ASCHAM'S METHOD OF TEACHING. IO3 

rected by the master, he is after the interval of an hour 
to translate the English into Latin back again. The 
translation is to be compared by the master with Cicero's 
original. He is not to chide, but to say, '' Tully would 
have used such a word, not this; Tully would have 
placed this word here, not there ; would have used this 
case, this number, this person, this degree, this gender ; 
he would have used this word, this mood, this tense, this 
simple rather than this compound ; this adverb here, not 
there ; he would have ended the sentence with this verb, 
not with that noun or participle. '^ In this way the 
scholar is to go through the first book of Sturm's selected 
Epistles, and a good piece of a comedy of Terence. But 
he is to speak no Latin, for, as Cicero says, loquendo 
i)iale loqui disctmf. In proceeding the scholar is to have 
longer lessons, he is to learn the rudiments of style, the 
meaning of propriuin (literal), of translatnm. (meta- 
phorical), of sipionymum (synonymous), of diversum 
(differing in signification in certain respects), contraria 
(opposite in signification to each other). He is to classify 
the words in order in a third paper book. In this way 
he is to work through the best writings of Tully, Ter- 
ence, Caesar, and Livy. Then he is to translate into 
Latin some piece of English given him by the teacher. 
Ascham proceeds to pass in view other exercises in style 
which were in vogue in his time, and shows their in- 
feriority to that which he recommends, but the book 
remains unfinished. We see in this that Ascham scarcely 
goes beyond his friend and master, John Sturm. His 
main object is the teaching of the Latin and Greek 
tongues. He is little else than a mere schoolmaster, 



104 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

careful and accurate in that capacity, but with no ex- 
tended views or aims. 

Milton's Tractate. — Very different in scope and spirit 
is the tractate of John Milton. It is written in the 
form of a letter to Mr. Samuel Hartlib, the son of a 
Polish merchant who resided mainly in London. He was 
a friend of every new discovery which seemed likely to 
advance the happiness of the human race. He took 
great interest in science, in the union of the Protestant 
Churches, and above all in education. He published, 
in 1651, ^^Propositions for the Erecting of a College of 
Husbandry Learning," or, in modern phraseology, an 
agricultural college, in which he proposed that appren- 
tices, received at the age of fifteen, should after seven 
years' instruction receive money to set themselves up in 
a farm, and a yearly payment for four years. Also, in 
1647, Sir William Petty, the founder of the Lansdowne 
family, wrote to Mr. Hartlib a letter containing a scheme 
for a trade or industrial school, a grand plan which we 
may possibly see realized in our own day by the estab- 
lishment of a technological university in London. Sir 
William Petty says, '''All apprentices might learn the 
theory of their trades before they are bound to a master, 
and consequently be exempted from the tedium of a 
seven years' bondage, and having spent but about three 
years with a master, may spend the other four in travel- 
ling to learn breeding and the perfection of their trades. " 
To the same category belongs Cowley's scheme of a 
philosophical college, published in 1661, the school part 
of which bears so much resemblance to Milton's scheme 
as to make it certain that Cowley in writing it must have 
had the former in his mind. Although these plans were 



MILTON HAS COMENIUS'S IDEAS. 105 

never carried out, being indeed impossible in the troubled 
times of the Commonwealth and ill suited to the frivolous 
temper of the Restoration, they show us plainly enough 
the desire which was fermenting in men's minds for a 
better and more liberal education. Had they met with 
more success the English might have been by this time 
the best educated nation in Europe. 

He has Comenius's Ideas. — It was natural that Hartlib 
should have been especially attracted by the writings of 
Oomenius, the great Moravian teacher, who announced 
to his age a discovery as important as that of Bacon, 
heralded with the same confidence, and promising as 
great results. We have become acquainted with the 
principles of Comenius in a previous chapter. We have 
seen that one of the most important points on which he 
insists is the simultaneous teaching of words and things. 
Endless time had been spent on the mere routine of 
language — why not at least attempt to utilize this labor, 
and while the drudgery of words and sentences is pro- 
ceeding, take care that what is learned is worth remem- 
bering for itself. We shall find these same lines of 
thought running through Milton's tractate. Writing to 
Mr. Hartlib, he proceeds to set down ^^ that voluntary 
idea, which hath long in silence presented, itself to me, 
of a better education in time and comprehension far more 
large, and yet of time far shorter and of attainment far 
more certain than hath yet been in practice." He asks 
his friend '^^to accept these few observations which have 
flowered off, and are as it were the burnishings of many 
studious and. contemplative years altogether spent in the 
search of civil and religious knowledge, and since it 



I06 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

pleased you so well in the relating, I here give you them 
to dispose of." 

Milton's Ideas. — Milton begins by the principle that 
the end of learning is to repair the sins of our first 
parents by regaining to know God aright; and, because 
God can only be known in his works, we must by the 
knowledge of sensible things arrive gradually at the con- 
templation of the insensible and invisible. Now we 
must begin with language ; but language is only the in- 
strument conveying to us things useful to be known. 
No man can be called learned who does not know the 
solid things in languages as well as the languages them- 
selves. Here we see asserted the important principle 
that words and things must go together, and that things 
are more important than words. The next principle 
with which weare familiar in the writings of Comenius 
and others, is that we must proceed from the easier to 
the more difficult. "We are warned against *^a prepos- 
terous exaction, forcing the empty wits of children to 
compose themes, verses, and orations, which are the acts 
of the ripest judgment. " Matters were indeed far worse 
in Milton's time than they are now in this respect. AVe 
have to a great extent thrown off the tyranny of the 
grammarians and the schoolmen. But we are still guilty 
of the ''' error of misspending our prime youth at the 
schools and universities either in learning mere words or 
such things chiefly as were better unlearned. " We have 
still as much need as ever that some one should '' point 
us out the right path of a virtuous and noble education, 
so laborious indeed at first ascent, but else so smooth, so 
green, and so full of goodly prospects and melodious 



MILTON'S SCHOOL DESCRIBED. I07 

sounds on every side that the harp of Orpheus was not 
more charming/' 

His School Described. — Milton defines what he means 
by education in the following words: '^ I call a complete 
and generous education that which fits a man to perform 
Justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both 
public and private, of peace and Avar." To attain this 
object, first a spacious house and grounds about it is to 
be found, fit for an academy to lodge about 130 students 
under the government of one head. This is to be both 
school and university, to give a complete education from 
twelve to twenty-one, not needing a removal to any other 
place of learning. There is something strange in the 
idea of welding together the school and university, but 
it was more consonant to the opinions and practice of 
Milton's own age. He himself spent at the university 
the years between fourteen and twenty-one ; the ordinary 
length of the academical course being seven years from 
entrance to the degree of M.A. So that his proposal is 
not so much to suppress the university as the school. 
Doubtless he saw little hope of reforming a large body 
like the university, or weaning it from the useless brab- 
blements of the Aristotelian philosophy, whereas by a 
private establishment such as he describes the reform 
might be begun at once. We must remember also that 
the age of entrance at public schools is now what the age 
of entrance at the university was in Milton's time; while 
many of our public school boys do not go to the univer- 
sity at all. The plan advocated by Milton is in this 
respect carried out in France, and pupils graduate di- 
rectly from the lycee, only attending afterward a special 
school of law or physic. Such institutions as Owens 



I08 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

College at Manchester are doing precisely the work which 
Milton recommends. 

His Course of Study. — Milton divides his scheme of 
education into three parts : (1) Studies ; (2) Exercise ; 
(3) Diet. In order to do justice to his method we must 
remember that he does not conceive of any education 
possible except through the Latin or Greek tongues. 
To make his precepts useful to us we must tear aside 
this veil, and go as deeply as we can into the principles 
which underlie his teaching, and infer what he would 
have recommended to us under a different state of things. 
In those days Latin was the language of the whole 
learned world. A man ignorant of Latin would have 
no access to the best books of the age, and no opportun- 
ity of communicating his thoughts to the world at large. 
It is natural, therefore, that he should recommend Latin 
grammar to be taught first, but with the Italian pronun- 
ciation of the vowels such as is rapidly making its way 
among us at the present day. But here at the outset 
the means are subordinate to the end. Language is to 
be the vehicle of moral teaching for the formation of a 
lofty character. The Pinax of Oebes, which as a school- 
book is coming now again into favor, and which advo- 
cates moral principles in simple language ; the moral 
works of Plutarch, one of the purest and most high- 
minded of the ancients, and the best dialogues of Plato 
are to be read to the youthfurscholars. For here Milton 
says, *^the main rule and ground-work will be to tempt 
them with such lectures and explanations upon every 
opportunity as may lead and draw them in willing obedi- 
ence, inflamed with the study of learning and the admi- 
ration of virtue, cheered up with high hope of living to 



MILTON'S COURSE OF STUDY. 109 

be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God and 
famous to all ages/^ Milton emphasizes the cardinal 
truth of education, that it resides not in the mechanical 
perfection of study and routine, but in the spirit of the 
teacher working in the heart of the pupil. The first 
step in education is to make the pupils '^^ despise and 
scorn all their childish and ill-taught qualities, to delight 
in manly and liberal exercises, to infuse into their young 
hearts such an ingenuous and noble ardor as would not 
fail to make many of them renowned and matchless 
men." Together with their Latin exercises, arithmetic, 
and geometry, are to be taught playing, '^'as the old 
manner was," and religion is to occupy them before 
going to bed. Thus ends the first stage of their educa- 
tion. It should be remarked that the Greek authors, 
Cebes, Plutarch, and Plato, are to be read, of course in 
Latin translations, and that they are to be '^read to" 
the boys probably in the manner recommended by Eatich 
and Ascham. As soon as they are masters of the rudi- 
ments of Latin Grammar they are to read those treatises, 
such as Cato, Varro, and Columella, which are concerned 
with agriculture. The object of this is not only to teach 
them Latin but to incite and enable them to improve 
the tillage of their country, to remove the bad soil and 
to remedy the waste that is made of good. Then after 
learning the use of globes and maps, and the outlines of 
geography, ancient and modern, they are to read some 
compendious method of natural philosophy. After this 
they are to begin Greek, but the authors read have ref- 
erence to natural science, which is at this period the 
staple of their education. When in their mathematical 
studies they have reached trigonometry, that will intro- 



no EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

duce them to fortification, architecture, engineering, and 
navigation. They are to proceed in the study of nature 
as far as anatomy, and they are to acquire the principles 
of medicine that they may know the tempers, the 
humors, the seasons, and how to manage a crudity. No 
advocate of scientific education could have sketched out 
a more comprehensive plan of study in these depart- 
ments. 

Practical Knowledge. — Then follows a suggestion 
which has often been made by educational theorists, 
but not often tried. There are some minds which are 
inaccessible to purely abstract knowledge; learning 
takes no hold on them unless it is connected with do- 
ing, and it has occurred to many that, if to the whole 
curriculum of science there could be added a curriculum 
of practice, few pupils would be found incapable of re- 
ceiving intellectual education. We find this feature in 
the Paedagogic Province of Goethe^s ^'^Wilhelm Meister," 
and the few occasions on which it has been tried give 
encouragement for its further use. Milton accepts it 
without reserve. '^ To set forward all these proceedings 
in nature and mathematics, what hinders but they may 
procure, as oft as shall be needful, the helpful experi- 
ences of hunters, fowlers, fishermen, shepherds, garden- 
ers, apothecaries, and, in the other sciences, architects, 
engineers, anatomists, who, doubtless, would be ready, 
some for reward and some to favor such a hopeful semi- 
nary. And this will give them such a real tincture of 
natural knowledge as they will never forget, but daily 
augment with delight/' 

Moral Teaching. — These rudimentary studies, classi- 
cal, mathematical, and practical, may be supposed to 



THE ITALIAN LANGUAGE. HI 

have occupied them to the age of sixteen, when they are 
for the first time to be introduced to graver and harder 
topics. '^As they begin to acquire character, and to 
reason on the difference between good and evil, there 
will be required a constant and sound indoctrinating 
to set them right and firm, instructing them more 
amply in the knowledge of virtue and the hatred of 
vice. For this purpose their young and pliant affec- 
tions are to be led through the moral works of Plato. 
Xenophon, Cicero, and Plutarch, but in their night- 
ward studies they are to submit to the more determi- 
nate sentence of Holy Writ.'^ Thus they will have trav- 
ersed the circle of ethical teaching. During this and 
the preceding stage, poetry is to be read as an amuse- 
ment, and as a golden fringe to the practice of serious 
labor. 

The Italian Language. — "And either now," Milton 
remarks, " or before this, they may have easily learned, 
at any odd hour, the Italian tong*ue." This sentence 
has often been quoted to show how visionary and base- 
less Milton^s idea of education was. But experience is 
here in his favor, and those who have tried the experi- 
ment are well aware that Italian may easily be learned 
by intelligent and studious boys with little expenditure 
of time or interruption of other studies. 

Politics. — Ethics is to be succeeded by politics. After 
the foundation of their character and principles, then 
is to follow their education as citizens. They are to 
learn "the beginning, end, and reason of political so- 
cieties ; that they may not in a dangerous fit of the 
Commonwealth be such poor, shaken, uncertain reeds, 
of such a tottering conscience as many of our good coun- 



112 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

cillors have of late showed themselves, but steadfast pil- 
lars of the State." The study of law is to come next, 
including all the Roman edicts, and tables with Justin- 
ian, and also the Saxon law, and common law of Eng- 
land, and the statutes of the realm. 

Theology. — ''■ Sundays also and every evening may be 
now understandingly spent in the highest matters of 
theology, and Church history, ancient and modern." 

Hebrew, etc. — By the age of eighteen Hebrew will 
have been learned, and possibly Syrian and Ohaldaic. 

Tragedies. — Tragedy will be read and learned in close 
connection with political oratory. ^^ These, if got by 
memory and solemnly pronounced with right accent and 
grace, as might be taught, would endue them even with 
the spirit and vigor of Demosthenes or Cicero, Euripides 
or Sophocles." 

Composition. — When their minds are truly stored with 
this wealth of learning, they are at length to acquire 
the art of expression, both in writing and in speech. 
'^^From henceforth, and not till now, will be the right 
season for forming them to be able writers and compos- 
ers in every excellent matter, when they shall be thus 
fraught with an universal insight into things." 

Thus ends this magnificent and comprehensive 
scheme. '^ These are the studies wherein our noble and 
our gentle youth" (observe that Milton is thinking of 
the education of a gentleman) '' ought to bestow their 
time in a disciplinary way from twelve to one-and- 
twenty, unless they rely more upon their ancestors dead 
than upon themselves living. In the which methodical 
course it is so supposed they must proceed by the steady 
pace of learning onward, as in convenient times to retire 



kEMARKB. 1 1 3 



back into the middle ward, and sometimes into the rear 
of what they have been taught, until they have con- 
firmed and solidly united the whole body of their per- 
fected knowledge like the last embattling of a Roman 
legion/' 

Remarks, — One of the main hopes of the improve- 
ment of education lies in adopting the truth that manly 
and serious studies are capable of being handled and 
mastered by intelligent schoolboys. We might have 
hoped that the publication of John Stuart MilFs ^' Au- 
tobiography^' would have led to the imitation of the 
method by which he gained a start of twenty years over 
his contemporaries in the race of life. It seems to have 
produced the contrary effect. But no one can read 
MilFs letter to Sir S. Bentham without acknowledging 
that he had done at the age of thirteen nearly as much 
as Milton expected from his matured students. Mill 
was reading Thucydides, Euclid, and algebra at eight, 
Pindar and conic sections at nine, trigonometry at ten, 
Aristotle at eleven, optics and fluxions at twelve, logic 
and political economy at thirteen. He had also by this 
time written two histories and a tragedy. There is no 
reason to suppose that the studies thus early acquired 
did not form an integral part of his mind, or that when 
writing his standard works on logic and political econ- 
omy, or sketching a complete scheme of education at St. 
Andrew^s, he was not using the knowledge which he had 
acquired in these very tender years. 

Physical Exercise. — The physical exercise proposed 
by Milton for his students is of an equally practical 
character, and differs widely from the laborious toiling 
at unproductive games, which is the practice of our own 



114 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 



day. With him amusement^, emulation, bodily skill, 
the cheerfulness of bright companionship, are all 
pressed into the service of practical life. Dinner is 
taken at noon, and about an hour or an hour and a half 
before that meal is to be allowed them for exercise, and 
rest afterward. The first exercise recommended is 
"the use of the sword, to guard and to strike safely 
with edge or point. This will keep them healthy, nim- 
ble, strong, and well in breath, is also the likeliest 
means to make them grow large and tall, and to inspire 
them with a gallant and fearless courage.^' They are 
also to be practised in '' all the locks and gripes of wrest- 
ling." After about an hour of such exercise, during 
the needful repose which precedes their mid-day meal, 
they may "with profit and delight be taken up in re- 
cruiting and composing their travailed spirits with the 
solemn and divine harmonies of music, heard or learned, 
either while the skilful organist plies his grave and fan- 
cied descant in lofty fugues, or the whole symphony 
with artful and unimaginable touches adorn and grace 
the well-studied chords of some choice composer. 
Sometimes the lute or soft organ-stop, waiting on ele- 
gant voices either to religious, martial, or civil ditties, 
which, if wise men and prophets be not extremely out, 
have a great power over dispositions and manners, to 
smooth and make them gentle from rustic harshness 
and distempered passions." The same rest, with the 
same accompaniment, is to follow after food. About 
two hours before supper, which I suppose would be at 
about seven or eight o'clock, "they are by a sudden 
alarum or watchword to be called out to their military 
motions under sky or covert, according to the season, as 



VA CA TION JO URNE YS. 1 1 5 

was the Roman wont, first on foot, then, as their age 
permits, on horseback, to all the arts of cavalry ; that 
having in sport, but with much exertion and daily 
muster, served out the rudiments of their soldiership in 
all the skill of encamping, marching, embattling, forti- 
fying, besieging and battering, with all the help of 
ancient and modern stratagems, tactics, and warlike 
maxims, they may, as it were, out of a long war come 
forth renowned and perfect commanders in the service 
of their country." Milton had good reason to desire the 
formation of the nucleus of a citizen army, and much 
service might be rendered by our school rifle corps if 
they were organized on a more serious and laborious 
model. 

Vacation Journeys. — In Milton's institution the vaca- 
tions were intended to be short, but the time was not all 
to be spent in work without a break. ''■ In those vernal 
seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, 
it were an injury and sullenness against nature not to 
go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing 
with heaven and earth. I should not therefore be a 
persuader to them of studying much then, after two or 
three years, that they have well laid their grounds, but 
to ride out in companies with prudent and staid guides 
into all quarters of the land, learning and observing all 
places of strength, all commodities of building and of 
soil for towns and villages, harbors and ports of trade ; 
sometimes taking sea as far as our navy, to learn also 
what they can in the practical knowledge of sailing and 
sea fights. These journeys would try all their peculiar- 
ities of nature, and if there were any such excellence 
among them would fetch it out, and give it fair oppor- 



Il6 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

tunities to advance itself by." **^This," he says, ^'will 
be much better than asking Monsieurs of Paris to take 
our hopeful 3^ouths into their slight and prodigal custody, 
and send them back transformed into mimics, apes, and 
kickshoes." 

Travelling. — Travelling abroad is to be deferred to the 
age of three-and -twenty, when they will be better able 
to profit by it. In Milton's time communication was far 
more difficult than it is now. Not only was a short trip 
on the Continent out of the question, but even travelling 
in England was laborious and slow. Yet even in these 
days our young statesmen are profoundly ignorant of 
the country to which they belong, and a knowledge of 
its character and resources should be the first founda- 
tion of sound political wisdom. In our own day we 
might go so far as to regard a knowledge of the whole 
world as the fitting conclusion to a liberal education, and 
Milton, if he were writing now, might recommend an 
educational cruise such as has been attempted in America 
and France. Of diet, his last division, Milton tells us 
nothing except that it should be in the same house, and 
that it should be plain, healthful, and moderate. 

In conclusion Milton anticipates some of the objections 
which might be raised against his plan, on the score of 
its impracticability, or its aiming at too high a standard. 
He admits that a scheme of this kind cannot be carried 
out except under the most favorable conditions, with 
teachers and scholars above the average. ^^I believe," 
he says, ^Hhat this is not a bow for every man to shoot 
in, that counts himself a teacher ; but will require sinews 
almost equal to those which Homer gave Ulysses ; yet I 
am Avithal persuaded that it may prove much more easy 



ANALYSIS. 117 

iu the essay than it now seems at a distance, and mucli 
more illustrious, howbeit, not more difficult than I im- 
agine, and that imagination presents me with nothing 
else, but very happy and very possible, according to best 
wishes, if God have so decreed, and this age have spirit 
and capacity enough to apprehend. " 



ANALYSIS OF CHAPTER VI. 

PAGE 

English Realists and Naturalists 99 

Roger Ascham 99 

Ascliam's " Scholemaster " 100 

His Method of Teaching 103 

Milton's Tractate 104 

He has Comenius's Ideas 105 

Milton's Ideas 106 

His School Described 107 

His Course of Study 108 

Practical Knowledge 110 

Moral Teaching 110 

The Italian Language Ill 

Politics Ill 

Theology 113 

Hebrew, etc 113 

Tragedies 113 

Composition 113 

Remarks 113 

Physical Exercise 113 

Vacation Journeys - . . . . 115 

Travelling 116 



Il8 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 



LOCKE. 

Locke's Ideas Far-reaching. — The ideas on education 
first mooted in an irregular and jesting manner by 
Rabelais, then developed and made current in good 
society by Montaigne, were popularized in England by 
Locke, and through him exercised a mighty influence 
over Europe in the Emile of Rousseau. Although 
Locke's ^^ Thoughts on Education"' are probably little 
read in the present day, they have had a powerful effect 
on the attitude of English society toward education, 
and, consciously or unconsciously, they determine the 
character of our most characteristic educational institu- 
tion, the English public school. These schools, on their 
intellectual sides the creation of John Sturm and the 
Jesuits, have been deeply penetrated by the spirit of 
naturalism, but we imagine that few of those who defend 
the fresh air and healthy exercise, the self-government 
and the savoir faire which our public schools provide 
with such success, have any idea that the principles 
which they support from prejudice have their origin in 
the theories of two such philosophers as Locke and 
Rousseau. 

' The best edition of Locke's " Thoughts on Education" is that 
by the Rev. R. H. Quick, published at the Cambridge University 
Press, 1880. 



PREFERS A TUTOR TO A PUBLIC SCHOOL. II9 



Prefers a Tutor to a Public School. — The similarity 
between Locke and Montaigne is very apparent, and it 
will be well to examine it more closely. Both recom- 
mend education bya tutor rather than in a public school. 
In comparing the advantages of the home and the school 
Locke says, *' I confess both sides have their inconven- 
iences. Being abroad 'tis true will make him bolder, 
and better able to bustle and shift among boys of his 
own age, and the emulation of school-fellows often puts 
life and industry into young lads. But till you can find 
a school wherein it is possible for the master to look 
after the manners of his scholars, and can show as great 
effects of his care of forming their minds to virtue and 
their carriage to good breeding, you must confess that 
you have a strange value for w^ords when . . . you think 
it worth while to hazard your son's innocence and virtue 
for a little Greek and Latin. For as for that boldness 
and spirit which lads get among their playfellows at 
school, it has ordinarily such a mixture of rudeness and 
ill-turned confidence that their misbecoming and disin- 
genuous ways of shifting in the world must be unlearned, 
and all the tincture washed out again, to make way for 
better principles and such manners as make a truly 
worthy man." Great care is to betaken in the choice of 
a tutor and no expense is to be spared. ^^ He that at 
any rate procures his child a good mind, well-principled, 
tempered to virtue and usefulness, and adorned with 
civility and good-breeding, makes a better purchase for 
him than if he laid out the money for an addition of more 
earth to his former acres." The consideration of charge 
ought not to deter those who are able. Spare no care 
nor cost to get a good tutor. If you get a good one you 



I20 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES, 

Avill never repent the charge, but will always have the 
satisfaction to think it the money of all others the best 
laid out. Most parents only look for a sober man and 
a scholar, but '^ when such an one has emptied out into 
his pupil all the Latin and logic he has brought from the 
university, will that furniture make him a fine gentle- 
man ?" ^^ To form the young gentleman as he should be, 
^tis fit that the governor should himself be well-bred. 
This is an art not to be learned from books. Nothing 
can give it but good company and observaJ^ion joined 
together. ^^ ^^The tutor, therefore, ought m the first 
place to be well-bred, and a young gentleman who gets 
this one qualification from his governor sets out with 
great advantage, and will find that this one accomplish- 
ment will more open his way to him, get him more 
friends, and carry him further in the world than all the 
hard words or real knowledge he has got from the liberal 
arts or his tutor's learned encyclopaedia." 

Describes a Tutor. — Locke goes on to demand more 
than this from his ideal tutor, always in the spirit of 
Montaigne. '■' Besides being well-bred, the tutor should 
know the world well; the ways, the humors, the follies, 
the cheats, the faults of the age he is fallen into, and 
particularly of the country he lives in. " The neglect of 
this often leads to the excesses into which young men 
run as soon as they are their own masters, '^ having been 
bred up in a great ignorance of what the world truly is, 
and finding it a quite other thing when they come into 
it than what they were taught it should be." ''He 
that thinks not this of more moment to his son, and for 
which he more needs a governor, than the languages 
and learned sciences, forgets of how much more use it is 



DESCRIBES A TUTOR. 121 



to judge rightly of men, and manage his affairs wisely 
with them, than to speak Greek and Latin or argue in 
mood and figure, or to have his head filled with the ab- 
struse speculations of natural philosophy or metaphys- 
ics/' ^^ A great part of the learning now in fashion in 
the schools of Europe", and that ordinarily goes into the 
round of education, a gentleman may in a good meas- 
ure be unfurnished with without any great disparage- 
ment to himself, or prejudice to his affairs. But pru- 
dence and good breeding are in all the stations and oc- 
currences of life necessary." '' Latin and learning make 
all the noise, and the main stress is laid upon his profi- 
ciency in things a great part of which belong not to a 
gentleman's calling, which is to have the knowledge of 
a man of business, a carriage suitable to his rank, and to 
be eminent and useful to his country according to his 
station." '* The great work of a governor is to fashion 
the carriage and form the mind, to settle in his pupil 
good habits and tlie principles of virtue and wisdom, to 
give him by little and little a view of mankind, and 
work him into a love and imitation of what is excellent 
and praiseworthy, and in the prosecution of it to give 
him vigor, activity, and industry. The studies which 
he sqj:s him upon are but as it were the exercises of 
his faculties, and employment of his time to keep him 
from sauntering and idleness, to teach him application, 
and accustom him to take pains, and to give him some 
little taste of what his own industry must perfect." 
We see from these passages that Locke like Montaigne 
laid greater stress on the formation of the character and 
of the personality of the man than on the culture of the 
intellect. " The great principle and foundation of all 



122 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

virtue and worth is placed in this; that a man is able to 
deny himself of his own desires, cross his own inclina- 
tions, and purely follow what reason directs as best, 
though the appetite lean the other way." 

Kecommends Foreign Travel. — Locke also agrees with 
Montaigne in recommending travel at an early age, or 
else he would defer it with Eousseau until the education 
is completed, and the young man is fie to travel alone. 
He is strongly opposed to the practice, then common in 
England, of sending lads abroad at the age of fifteen or 
sixteen, when they were exposed to the severest tempta- 
tions, and were least able to resist them. '^The first 
season to get foreign languages, and form the tongue to 
their true accent, I should think should be from seven 
to fourteen or sixteen ; and then a tutor with them is 
useful and necessary, who may with these languages 
teach them other things." ''The time I should think 
fittest for a young gentleman to be sent abroad would 
be either when he is younger under a tutor, whom he 
might be the better for, or when he is some years older, 
without a governor, when he is of age to govern himself, 
and make observations of what he finds in other coun- 
tries worthy his notice, and that might be of use to him 
after his return; and when, too, being thoroughly ac- 
quainted with the laws and fashions, the natural and 
moral advantages and defects of his own country, he has 
something to exchange with those abroad, from whose 
conversation he hoped to reap any knowledge." Locke 
complains that the chief drawback to this plan is the 
custom of early marriages among people of rank and 
fortune. His own pupil, the second Lord Shaftesbury, 
was married at the age of seventeen. 



METHODS OF TEACHING RECOMMENDED. 1 23 

Methods of Teaching Recommended. — The most con- 
venient way of giving an account of so well known and 
accessible a book will be to show in what respects Locke 
agreed with the rest of the naturalistic school. First, 
in respect to the methods of instruction. Books are 
not the most important instruments of learning. "VVe 
must educate the senses, and through the senses train 
the intellect. The child is to be taught to read as soon 
as he can talk, but the learning is to be made as easy to 
him as possible. Basedow had biscuits baked in the 
form of letters, and children were allowed to eat any 
letter they could tell the name of. Similarly Locke 
recommends an ivory ball of twenty-four or twenty-five 
sides, with the different letters pasted upon them, be- 
ginning with four or even two. ^^To keep up his 
eagerness to it, let him think it a game belonging to 
those above him, and when by this means he knows the 
letters, by changing them into syllables he may learn to 
read without knowing how he did so, and never have 
any chiding or trouble about it, nor fall out with books 
because of the hard usage and vexation they have caused 
him." When he has learned to read he is to have an 
easy, pleasant book put into his hand, such as "^^sop's 
Fables," with pictures, or ^^ Reynard the Fox." ^^As 
soon as he begins to spell, as many pictures of animals 
should be got him as can be found, with the printed 
names to them, which at the same time will invite him 
to read, and afford him matter of inquiry and knowl- 
edge." We are here reminded of Pestalozzi teaching 
his poor children by the old tapestry in the castle of 
Burgdorf. He is to learn writing, drawing, and short- 
hand, and the first language which he begins after his 



124 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

own is French. Not till he can read and speak French 
well is he to begin Latin. 

Latin. — Locke agrees with Montaigne that Latin is 
absolutely necessary to a gentleman, and in the method 
of learning which he recommends he follows what Mon- 
taigne tells us of his own childhood. We are not to 
begin with grammar. If possible a man is to be found 
who speaks good Latin, and is never to allow his pupil 
to speak or read anything else. This would be the true 
and genuine way. Whereas a child might without pains 
or chiding get a language which others are wont to be 
whipped for at school six or seven years together." At 
the same time he might, as Milton recommends, be in- 
structed in several sciences, and learn a good deal of 
geography, astronomy, chronology, anatomy, and some 
history, *^^and all other parts of the knowledge of things 
that fall under the senses, and require little more than 
memory. For there if we would take the true way, our 
knowledge should begin, and in these things be laid the 
foundation, and not in the abstract notions of logic and 
metaphysics, which are fitter to amuse than inform the 
understanding in its first setting out toward knowl- 
edge." If a man cannot be got who speaks good Latin, 
then we are to adopt the plan of having literal transla- 
tions, printed word for word, and line for line. This 
method has been very generally adopted since Locke's 
time, and usually bears the name of Hamilton. Locke 
shows the same confidence in the employment of the 
senses in another passage. 

The Globes. — ''^The globes must be studied, and that 
diligently, and I think may be begun betimes if the 
tutor will be but careful to distinguish what the child is 



THE OBJECTS OF STUDY. I25 

capable of knowing and what not; for wliicli this may 
be a rule that perhaps will go a pretty wa}^^ viz., that 
children may be taught anything which falls under their 
senses, especially their sight, as far as their memories 
only are exercised. And thus a child very young may 
learn which is the equator, and which is the meridian, 
which Europe and which England, upon the globes, as 
soon almost as he knows the rooms of the house he lives 
in, if care be taken not to teach him too much at once, 
nor to set him upon a new part till that which he is 
upon he perfectly learned and fixed in his memory.'^ 
This method of object-teaching is perhaps the greatest 
service which the naturalistic school has rendered to the 
cause of education. Hinted at by Kabelais and Locke, 
still more largely developed by Eousseau, it has received 
in the last century a more accurate and scientific form, 
and is probably destined to become the source of a new 
curriculum in which literature will only hold a second- 
ary place. 

The Objects of Study. — To encourage independence of 
thought rather than to amass a quantity of learning, to 
direct study rather to the strengthening of the powers 
of the mind than to acquiring the furniture of crudities, 
is the key-note of Locke's advice on the '^ Conduct of 
the Understanding," and is one of the most important 
points on which the naturalistic school insists. This 
view of the objects of study is given most clearly in 
Locke's remarks upon this subject, which were written 
in his journal for his own use alone.' He says, ''Our 
first and great duty is to bring to our studies and to our 



' This essay is reprinted by Mr. Quick. 



126 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

inquiries after knowledge a mind covetous of truth; 
that seeks after nothing else, and after that impartially, 
and embraces it, how poor, hoAV contemptible, and how 
unfashionable soever it may be/' Again, at the conclu- 
sion of the essay, ^'^I will only say this one thing con- 
cerning books, that however it has got the name, yet 
converse with books is not in my opinion the principal 
part of study; there are two others that ought to be 
joined with it, each whereof constitutes their share to 
our improvement in knowledge, and these are medita- 
tion and discourse. Reading, metliinks, is but collect- 
ing the rough materials, among which a great deal must 
be laid aside as useless. Meditation is as it were choos- 
ing and -fitting the materials, framing the timbers, 
squaring and laying the stones, and raising the building; 
and discourse with a friend (for wrangling in a dispute 
is of little use) is as it were surveying the structure, 
walking in the rooms, and observing the symmetry and 
agreement of the parts, taking notice of the solidity or 
defects of the works, and the best way to find out and 
correct what is amiss; besides that it helps often to dis- 
cover truths, and fix them in our minds as much as 
either of the other two/' 

Education must be Practical. — Locke agrees with the 
rest of the advocates of the naturalistic school in insist- 
ing on a practical education, which is to fit a man for 
the world, and in this he has undoubtedly been partly 
influenced by the practical character which has always 
more or less distinguished our national culture, and he 
has partly done much to give this direction to our edu- 
cation. ^^ Since it cannot be hoped," he says, ^' that 
[the pupil] should have time and strength to learn all 



J^nVDNESS, AND NOT SEVERITY. 12; 

things, most pains should bo taken with what is most 
necessary, and that principally looked after which will 
be of most and freqnentest use to him in the world. 
Seneca complains of the contrary practice in his time; 
and yet the Burgersdiciuses and the Scheiblers did not 
swarm in those days as they do now in these. What 
would he have thought if he had lived now, when the 
tutors think it their great business to fill the studies 
and heads of their pupils with such authors as these ? 
He would have had the more reason to say as he does, 
Non vitm seel schoIcB discinms ; we learn not to live but 
to dispute, and our education fits us rather for the uni- 
versity than the world." 

Kindness, and not Severity. — Another characteristic of 
the same school of thinkers is their preference of kindness 
to severity, and the severe condemnation of the cruelty 
and harshness which disfigured the schools of the Mid- 
dle Ages. It is now generally admitted that of the two 
chief means of compelling the attention of children, and 
inducing them to learn, pleasure is preferable to pain, 
but in Lockers day this truth was not recognized. He 
strongly condemns beating, still far too much in use in 
our public schools. '^ The usual lazy and short way by 
chastisement and the rod, which is the only instrument 
of government that tutors generally know or ever think 
of, is the most unfit of any to be used in education." 
'^ I cannot think any correction useful to a child where 
the shame of suffering for having done amiss does not 
work more upon him than the pain." '' Such a sort of 
slavish discipline makes a slavish temper." ^^ Beating 
them and all other sorts of slavish and corporal punish- 
ments are not the discipline fit to be used in the educa- 



I2S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES, 

tion of those we would have wise, good, aud ingenuous 
men, and therefore very rarely to be applied, and that 
only in great occasions and cases of extremity." The 
real incentives to virtuous exertion are the desire of es- 
teem, and the fear of disgrace. But after all, the 
'^ right way to teach is to give them a liking and inclina- 
tion to what you purpose them to be learned, and that 
will engage their industry and application. This I 
think no hard matter to do if children be handled as 
they should be." '^^ None of the things they are to learn 
should ever be made a burden to them, or imposed on 
them as a task." '^ As a consequence of this they should 
seldom be put doing even those things you have got an 
inclination in them to, but when they have a mind and 
disposition to it." Here we seem to have reached the 
most modern conclusions of Herbert Spencer. ^"^Get 
them but to ask their tutor to teach them as they do 
often their playfellows, instead of his calling upon them 
to learn, and they being satisfied that they act as freely 
in this as they do in other things, they will go on with 
as much pleasure in it, and it will not differ from their 
other sports and play. By these ways carefully pursued 
a child may be brought to desire to be taught anything 
you have a mind he should learn." 

Bodily Exercise. — Finally Locke agrees with Rabelais, 
Montaigne, and Rousseau, in laying great stress on the 
importance of bodily training. It is as important as 
that of the mind. He says at the very outset of his 
treatise, '^^ A sound mind in a sound body is a short but 
full description of a happy state in this world. He that 
has these two has little more to wish for; and he that 
wants either of them will be but little the better for any- 



BODILY EXERCISE. 1^9 

thing else. " Locke's advice as to the health of children 
occupies the first thirty sections of his essay. In Mr. 
Quick's edition a distinguished physician shows how far 
Locke's advice corresponds with the best medical science 
of the present day. He says that only on one important 
point can his advice be considered wrong, and that is 
where he recommends that children's boots should have 
holes in them in order that they may be kept constantly 
wet. Locke's advice on physical training consists 
mainly of the following points. 1. Children are to be 
hardened to cold and heat, and not protected too care- 
fully against extremes of temperature. 2. They are to 
wash the feet at least, if not the whole body, in cold 
water. 3. They are to learn to swim, and to live as 
much as possible in the open air. 4. They are to wear 
loose clothing. 5. They are to eat little meat, none at 
all for the first three or four years of life, little sugar, 
and no spice. When a child is hungry between meals, 
let him eat a piece of brown bread. 6. A child's meals 
are to be irregular. 7. He is to drink small beer (which 
in Locke's time took the place of water), but never un- 
til he has eaten something; wine and strong drink is 
on all accounts to be avoided. 8. Ripe fruit is much 
to be commended, especially before or between meals. 
9. Children are to go early to bed, and are to rise be- 
times. Eight hours' sleep is enough for most children. 
The bed is not to be soft, and children must be gently 
wakened. 10. Great care is to be paid to the regularity 
of the digestion. 11. As little physic is to be taken as 
possible. '^ And thus," Locke says, ^^1 have done with 
what concerns the body and health, which reduces itself 
to these few and easy observable rules — plenty of open 



G 



130 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

air, exercise, and sleep, plain diet, no wine or stron 
drink, and very little or no physic, not too warm or 
strait clothing, especially the head and feet kept cold, 
and the feet often used to cold water and exposed to 
wet." 

His Ideas Sound. — Such are the most characteristic 
features of Locke's principles of education. Whether 
his treatise is much read now or not, there can be no 
doubt that it was at one time popular in England, and 
many of the precepts which he was the first to suggest 
have become traditional in practice. Its sound com- 
mon-sense and good judgment would make it particu- 
larly acceptable to the English mind, and, with the 
exception of Milton's tractate on education, which would 
seem visionary to the superficial reader, it is one of the 
few works of importance on education which appeared 
in England until the essays of Mr. Spencer. 

Against writing Latin Verses, etc. — As we have before 
said, there can be little doubt that it has at some time 
or other had a considerable influence on the system of 
our public schools. But there are some portions of it, 
extremely valuable, concerned with subjects on which 
Locke was well qualified to speak, which have been un- 
accountably neglected. Among these are his strong 
condemnation of Latin themes and verses, and of the 
practice of saying by heart. ^^ By all means obtain if 
you can that [your son] be not employed in making 
Latin themes and declamations, and least of all verses of 
any kind." ^^'^Do but consider what it is in making a 
theme that a young lad is employed about ; it is to make 
a speech on some Latin saying, as Omnia vincit amor, or 
Non licet iii bello Ms peccarr, etc. And here the poor 



AGAINST WRITING LATIN VERSES, ETC. 131 

lad who wants knowledge of these things he is to speak 
of, which is to be had only from time and observation, 
must set his invention on the rack to say something 
where he knows nothing, which is a sort of Egyptian 
tyranny to bid them make bricks who have not yet any 
of the materials. And therefore it is usual in such 
cases for the poor children to go to those of higher forms 
with this petition. Fray give me a little sense, which 
whether it be more reasonable or more ridiculous is not 
easy to determine." On the other hand, the practice of 
debating rational and useful questions in extempore 
speeches is extremely valuable. If themes are set in 
order to teach Latin, that is not the way to it, ''when 
they are making a theme ^tis thoughts they search and 
sweat for, and not language." ''If boys' invention be 
to be quickened by such exercise, let them make themes 
in English, where they have facility, and a command of 
words, and will better see what kind of thoughts they 
have, when put into their own language." The case 
against verses is stated still more strongly. " If these 
may be any reasons against children's making Latin 
themes at school, I have much more to say, and of more 
weight, against their making verses — verses of any sort. 
For if he has no genius to poetry 'tis the most unreason- 
able thing in the world to torment a child, and waste 
his time, about that which can never succeed, and if he 
have a poetic vein 'tis to me the strangest thing in the 
world that the father should desire or suffer it to be 
cherished or improved." "But yet if any one will 
think poetry a desirable quality in his son, and that the 
study of it would raise his fancy and parts, he must 
needs yet confess that to that end reading the excellent 



132 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

Greek and Roman poets is of more use than making bad 
verses of his own in a language that is not his own. 
And he whose design it is to excel in English poetry 
would not, I guess, think the way to it were to make 
his first essays in Latin verses." 

Yet it is still done. — It is strange that, notwithstand- 
ing the denunciations of Locke, Milton, and Macaulay, 
the two last of whom cannot be thought to have been 
insensible to literary or poetical grace, the practice of 
writing original themes and verses in dead languages 
should occupy a position of such importance in our 
public schools. Great as is the burden to the boys, the 
correction of their exercises is a heavier labor to the 
masters. In some schools it occupies so much time as 
to make self-improvement and the proper preparation of 
lessons impossible. No seriously beneficial change in 
our public school education can be looked for unless the 
worship of this idol is once for all abolished. 

Against learning Latin and Greek by Heart.— Locke 
declaims with equal decisiveness and force against the 
practice, so common in our schools, of repeating long 
passages of classical authors by heart. It does not, he 
says, improve the memory. "The gift of memory is 
owing to a happy constitution, not to any habitual im- 
provement got by exercise. 'Tis true that what the 
mind is intent upon, and for fear of letting it slip often 
imprints afresh on itself by frequent reflection, that it 
is apt to retain, but still according to its own natural 
strength of retention." In fact, memory comes from 
interest. What children are deeply interested in they 
will never forget. A boy who can never say his lesson 
by heart will remember every detail of the cricket or 
football matches in which his heai't really lies. Be- 



DEFECTS IN THE TREATISE. 1 33 

sides, at best, this learning by heart is but learning to 
forget again. An Italian preacher will recite by heart a 
long sermon without loss of a word, but a week afterward 
he will not remember a word of it. Children should 
learn by heart what they are intended never to forget, 
and ^' therefore,^' says Locke, '^I think that it may do 
well to give them something every day to remember, 
but something still that is in itself worth the remember- 
ing, and which you would never have out of mind when- 
ever you call or they themselves search for \i" 

Defects in the Treatise. — Lockers treatise is of great 
value to teachers, but it has serious defects. Among 
these is his strange neglect of science. Although he 
gives full credit to the work of Newton in explainimg 
the operations of the solar system, he appears to have 
little hope that the same system of induction would lead 
to similar conquests in other spheres. Also, as he 
admits, he has ^' touched little more than those heads 
which I judged necessary for the breeding of a young 
gentleman. Whereas a prince, a nobleman, and an 
ordinary gentleman^s son should have different ways of 
breeding." Therefore it cannot be considered as a gen- 
eral treatise on education applicable to the mass of the 
people, or even to the conduct of a large school. Also 
the character of the work is to some extent polemical, 
that is, the author attacks vigorously those points in the 
received system which he wishes to see changed. Had 
it been otherwise he might have given more weight to 
intellectual education, as, in the *^ Thoughts concernifig 
reading and study for a gentleman,^' he admits that the 
gentleman's ^^ proper calling is the service of his country, 
and so is most properly concerned in moral and politica 
knowledge, and thus the studies which more imme- 



134 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

diately belong to his calling are those which treat of 
virtues and vices, of civil society and the arts of govern- 
ment, and will take in also law and history." But even 
here he adds the caution that ^' raen of much reading- 
are greatly learned but may be little knowing." 

The treatise of Locke should be carefully studied by 
every schoolmaster, and the more so because, although 
by his system of philosophy he disbelieved in the exist- 
ence of innate ideas, and regarded the child^s mind as a 
piece of white paper or as wax to be moulded, yet he 
does not deny the existence of different inherited capaci- 
ties in different individuals. '^^Each man's mind has 
some peculiarity as well as his face, that distinguishes 
him from all others, and there are possibly scarce two 
children who can be conducted by exactly the same 
method." 



ANALYSIS OF CHAPTER VII. 

PAGE 

Locke's Ideas Far-reaching 118 

Prefers a Tutor to a Public School 119 

Describes a Tutor 120 

Recommends Foreign Travel 133 

Methods of Teaching Recommended 133 

Latin 134 

The Globes 134 

The Objects of Study 135 

Education must be Practical 136 

Kindness and not Severity 137 

Bodily Exercise 138 

His Ideas Sound 130 

Against writing Latin Verses, etc 130 

Yet it is still done 133 

Against learning Latin and Greek by Heart 133 

Defects in the Treatise 133 



THE JESUIT TEACHERS. 1 35 



JESUITS AND JANSENISTS. 

The Jesuit Teachers. — Whatever abuse has been lav- 
ished for three hundred years upon the heads of the 
Jesuits, an exception is generally made in reference to 
their services in the cause of education. Bacon speaks 
of them with the highest praise, and regrets that similar 
reformers are not to be found in other countries. He 
says in the ^^Advancement of Learning/' ^'^for what 
concerns the instruction of youth there is only one word 
to say — consult the classes of the Jesuits, for there can 
be nothing better. '^ He says in another passage that 
when he thinks of them he recalls what Agesilaus said 
of Pharnabazus, ''^ Talis cum sis utinam noster esses." 
Descartes also considered their college of La Fleche as 
one of the best schools in Europe, although he attributes 
its merit rather to the variety of the students and their 
nfluence on one another than to any excellence of teach- 
ng on the part of the fathers themselves. Public opin- 
ion was certainly on their side. Under Henry III., 
Henry IV., Louis XIIL, Louis XIV., the Jesuit colleges 
in France were always crowded, in spite of the opposi- 
tion of the university, and at the beginning of the six- 
teenth century they had nearly 14,000 pupils in the 
province of Paris, and more than 1800 in the College of 
Clermont. In the middle of the eighteenth century, 



136 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

just before the dissolution of the order, it contained 
22,589 members. The order had 669 colleges and 117 
seminaries. The latest census reckons the order as con- 
sisting of 9546 members, of whom three thousand were 
in France, and a little over a thousand in England. 

Their System. — An account of the system of educa- 
tion given by the Company of Jesus is contained main- 
ly in four books. 1. The Original Constitutions of 
Ignatius Loyola, with the commentary of his successor, 
Laynez. 2. The "Ratio Studiorum," drawn up by a 
special commission under the eyes, and by the authority, 
of Aquaviva. It is divided into twenty-eight sections. 
It contains statutes for the provincial, the rector, the 
prefects of studies, the professors of the superior facul- 
ties, the prefects of the inferior studies, the teachers of 
the lower classes, and for the other preceptors and stu- 
dents of the order. It is a programme of studies, indi- 
cating with the greatest minuteness their order and their 
division, the subjects of teaching in each class, the 
duties of each professor. The drawing up of this im- 
portant work was begun in 1582, but it was not printed 
till 1599. 3. In 1706 was published at Frankfort a third 
book, the treatise of Father Jouvency, ''De ratione' 
discendi et docendi magistris scholarum inferiorum.*' 
4. With this is generally included a treatise by Sacchini, 
published at Rome 1625, " Paraenesis ad magistros 
scholarum inferiorum." The last two may be consid- 
ered as the completion of the '' Ratio Studiorum," based 
on the methods in use at the College of Clermont. The 
four books are closely connected together. The "Ratio 
Studiorum" is a commentary upon the Constitutions, 
the manuals of Jouvency and Sacchini are the directors 



THE JESUIT COLLEGES. 1 37 

of the teacher, guarding him at every step and guiding 
him in every particular. 

Their Colleges — We find that in France, and simi- 
larly in other countries, the colleges of the Company 
were divided into three classes. 1. The great colleges 
with a revenue of 20,000 francs, containing about 100 
teachers, in which were taught, besides the classics and 
sciences, theology and Eastern languages, with a special 
view to missions. 2. The middle colleges, with a revenue 
of 16,000 francs and about fifty teachers, instructing 
only in classics and philosophy, this last consisting of 
logic, morals, metaphysics, physics, and mathematics. 
3. Small colleges, with a revenue of 10,000 francs and a 
staff of from twenty to forty teachers, dealing only with 
the ordinary classical curriculum and morality. The 
education was gratuitous, and the poor and the rich were 
educated together. This however did not prevent the 
colleges from receiving presents, and the amount of 
these received from the richer students shows that they 
were well able to educate the poorer students for noth- 
ing. The colleges began as seminaries for the novices 
of the order ; then outdoor pupils were admitted at the 
request of the public ; then bursaries were added by 
private munificence; and, lastly, the sons of rich and 
noble families were admitted also. Besides the regular 
colleges, other institutions were founded under the di- 
rection of the rector, such as convictoria alumnorum, 
boarding schools in which a small sum was paid for 
board and lodging. Seminaries exclusively for the edu- 
cation of priests, and schools into which none were ad- 
mitted except the scions of noble families. We have 
only to deal now with the little colleges which belong to 



138 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 



secondary or school education. These were governed by 
a rector and a prefect of studies. His duty was to visit 
the classes, to conduct the examinations, and generally 
to inspect the work of teachers and pupils. Under him 
a sub-prefect attended especially to discipline. The 
school was divided into five classes : the class of Rudi- 
ments, the class of Grammar, the class of Syntax, the 
class of Poetry, and the class of Rhetoric. These classes 
might be subdivided but were never confused. The 
Jesuits were the inventors of ^'^ parallel forms,"" a system 
now common in our public schools. The course lasted 
six years, the first four classes occupying a year each, 
the class of Rhetoric two years. The main object of the 
whole instruction was knowledge of Latin. This was 
the language of the Jesuits, and served at the same time 
to separate them from the common herd, and to unite 
them by a bond of union which was independent of the 
differences of speech and country. The great object of 
their education was style. They knew too well the 
dangers of pagan literature to indoctrinate their pupils 
with the spirit of the classics. 

The Course of Study. — In the class of Rudiments were 
taught the Latin declensions and conjugations, and the 
first beginnings of syntax. Cicero^s letters were read, 
De virs illustribus, fables of Phaedrus, and Cornelius 
Nepos. The school hours were two and a half hours in 
the morning and the same in the afternoon. The time 
was carefully subdivided by half hours and quarter 
hours. Rules of grammar and portions of authors were 
explained ; both of these were learned by heart and re- 
peated, not to the master but to the dectirions or heads 
of tens, the Zehntmdnner of Comenius. A little com- 



THE COURSE OF STUDY. 1 39 

position was done and carefully corrected. By a prac- 
tice called concertatio, pupils were stimulated to chal- 
lenge each other's mistakes, an usage long kept up at 
Westminster. To develop copiousness of diction, long 
vocabularies of Latin words were learned and classified 
according to the categories to which they belonged. 
The second class, called Grammar or little Syntax, car- 
ried the knowledge of Latin further. Selections of Ovid 
were read, Caesar, Cicero's de Amicitid and de Senedute, 
VergiFs Eclogues and Georgics. The third class of 
Grammar completed the knowledge of syntax and pros- 
ody. Greek was learned in all three classes by the side 
of Latin, only to a much less extent. Religion received 
a good deal of attention ; of arithmetic, geography, 
history, and modern languages not a word is said. The 
two upper classes were called the classes of Humanities ; 
the first was called Humanity or Poetry, the second 
Rhetoric. These high-sounding names were scarcely 
warranted by the facts. The " Ratio Studiorum" states 
that the business of ^^ Poetry" is to jDrepare the ground- 
work of eloquence, and this in three ways — by the 
knowledge of the language, by erudition, and by a short 
instruction in the rules of rhetoric. *^ Rhetoric'' is to 
form the pupil to a perfect eloquence, to the faculty of 
the orator and the poet, but the first is the most impor- 
tant. In short we see that the object of these three last 
years is the formation of a Latin style in prose and 
poetry. For this purpose the speeches of Cicero were 
read, Csesar, Sallust, Livy, Curtius, Vergil, Horace, and 
other Latin authors. These were carefully expurgated. 
To this was added the other exercises of classical edu- 
cation with which we are familiar in our public schools 



I40 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

— repeating passages by hearty the writing of Latin 
themes and verses, for the better composition of which 
the '■' Graclus ad Parnassum" was invented by a Jesuit, 
concertations, declamations, and the acting of Latin 
plays. In the three lower classes half-an-hour a day had 
been devoted to Greek, in the two upper this time was 
doubled. If we may judge by the list of Greek authors 
which were supposed to be read, considerable proficiency 
must have been attained. It comprises Demosthenes, 
Plato, Thucydides, Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, and others 
of the same kind, Gregory of Nazianzen, Basil, Chrysos- 
tom, writings of Lucian, Plutarch, Herodian, Sophocles, 
and Euripides. But we know that this imposing parade 
meant but little, and that but little energy and vigor 
were really put into this study. All knowledge which 
was not language or style was classed by the Jesuits 
under the name of erudition, and to this were to be 
devoted extraneous hours, but no portion of the regular 
curriculum. These subjects might properly be learned 
on whole holidays, or got up by students as preparation 
for examinations. Among the subjects of erudition were 
included arithmetic, history, geography, and the ele- 
ments of algebra and geometry. 

The Daily Work. — Let us examine the daily work of a 
Jesuit school. The bell sounds at half-past six, and the 
scholars gradually assemble. At seven all attend mass, 
and at half-past seven the work of the day begins. 
After a short prayer, the master mounts his desk, and 
the boys say their lesson by heart to the decurions, 
while the master collects and corrects the exercises, and 
hears some lessons himself. From eight to nine the 
lessons of the day before are gone over, and a lecture is 



THE DAILY WORK. 141 

given on the new matter to be learned during the day. 
At nine the subject of a short composition is given out_, 
which must be written, corrected, and copied out within 
the hour. While the boys are writing, the master calls 
up some of the weaker students and gives them private 
explanations. At ten the school is dismissed. They 
come together again at half -past one. Lessons are again 
heard by the decurions, and exercises corrected by the 
master. The lessons previously given out are repeated, 
and new ones set. At three the composition of the 
morning is corrected by the master, and places are taken 
and lost. At half-past three the exercise to be done at 
home is given out, and the day ends with a concertation 
or challenging. This is the order for Mondays and 
Wednesdays, which are whole school days. Tuesday and 
Thursday are different, and one of them is a half-holi- 
day. On Friday especial attention is given to religious 
instruction, and on Saturday the work done during the 
week is examined by the master, with a general compe- 
tition among the students. Such was the normal order, 
but it was terribly broken up by saints' days and festi- 
vals of the Church. What first attracted pupils to the 
Jesuits in France was the greater mildness of discipline 
compared with the colleges of the University. Corporal 
punishment was not entirely abolished — it was inflicted 
by a servant, and not by the fathers themselves — but 
suavity and the use of persuasion was prescribed before 
everything. At the same time complete and absolute 
obedience was exacted from the children. Another 
feature in their favor was the isolation of the colleges. 
High walls surrounded them. Heavy doors shut them in. 
There were no servants to corrupt, no fathers to laugh 



142 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

at the escapades of their sons. The pupils were kept 
under surveillance in the streets to and from lecture. 

Why they were Successful. — We have seen that the 
Jesuits owed their success partly to the very narrow task 
which they set themselves, little beyond the teaching of 
Latin style, and partly to the careful training which 
they gave their students, a training which often degen- 
erated into mere mechanical exercise. But the main- 
spring of their influence was the manner in which they 
worked the dangerous force of emulation. Those pupils 
who were most distinguished at the end of each month 
received the rank of pi-cetor, censor, and decurion. The 
class was divided into two parts, called Romans and 
Carthaginians, Greeks and Trojans. The students sat 
opposite each other, the master in the middle, the walls 
were hung with swords, spears, and shields, which the 
contending parties carried off in triumph as the prize of 
victory. These pupils' contests wasted a great deal of 
time. The Jesuits established public school festivals, 
at which the pupils might be exhibited, and the parents 
flattered. They made their own school-books, in which 
the requirements of good teaching were not so important 
as the religious objects of the order. They preferred 
extracts to whole authors ; if they could not prune the 
classics to their fancy, they would not read them at all. 

Criticism on their Method. — What judgment are we 
to pass on the Jesuit teaching as a whole ? It deserves 
praise on two accounts. First, it maintained the dig- 
nity of literature in an age which was too liable to be 
influenced by considerations of practical utility. It 
maintained the study of Greek in France at a higher 
level than the University, and resisted the assaults of 



CRITICISM ON THE JESUIT'S METHOD. 143 

ignorant parents on the fortress of Hellenism. Secondly, 
it seriously set itself to understand the nature and char- 
acter of the individual pupil, and to suit the manner of 
education to the mind that was to receive it. Whatever 
may have been the motives of Jesuits in gaining the 
affections, and securing the devotion of the children 
under their charge ; whether their desire was to develop 
the individuality which they probed, or to destroy it in 
its germ, and plant a new nature in its place ; it must 
be admitted that the loving care which they spent upon 
their charge was a new departure in education, and has 
become a part of every reasonable system since their 
time. Here our praise must end. The systematizing 
of their classes and of their curriculum, for which Ranke 
praises them, was borrowed from John Sturm, and 
marred in the stealing. If Sturm is responsible for the 
predominance of a narrow classical education in our 
higher schools, the Jesuits are responsible for giving 
that education a more frivolous and more effeminate 
turn. They taught classics not because they were the 
best means of training the intellect, but because they 
were fashionable, and having accepted them they tried 
to render them as innocuous as possible. They amused 
the mind instead of strengthening it. They occupied 
in frivolities such as Latin verses the years which they 
feared might otherwise be given to reasoning and the 
acquisition of solid knowledge. Our Protestant schools 
have fallen only too readily into the trap. Nothing 
shows more clearly the essential weakness of their system 
than its inadaptability to modern wants. The '^ Ratio 
Studiorum^^ has been revised by the late and the present 
generals of the order. Father Roothan and Father Bekcx. 



144 EDUCAl'IONAL THEORtES. 

But they found it impossible to remodel without de- 
stroying it. Celebrated as the Jesuit schools have been, 
they have owed much more to the fashion which filled 
them with promising scholars, than to their own excel- 
lence in dealing with their material. Voltaire found 
out their rottenness. ''I learned nothing from the 
Jesuits/' he said, '^but Latin and rubbish." They have 
never stood the test of modern criticism. They have 
no place in a rational system of modern education. We 
have long ceased to regard them as models, but we still 
suffer our schools to be encumbered with methods and 
practices which we should never have thought of intro- 
ducing if it had not been for their brilliant but ephem- 
eral success. 

The Jansenists. — Very different was the character of 
the schools of Port Eoyal, founded by that brilliant soci- 
ety of Jansenists who clustered round the monastery of 
Angelique Arnauld. They form the most hopeful ex- 
periment in education which was ever attempted in 
France, and in estimating the influence of the Jesuits 
v/e cannot leave out of the account that the success of 
these schools was foiled by their narrow-minded jealousy 
and opposition. The education of Port Royal has had 
a reputation which is out of proportion either to the 
time during which it existed or to the number of schol- 
ars which it trained. The little schools, petites ecoles as 
they were called, in order that they might not seem to 
clash with the University, were founded in 1643. They 
existed only seventeen years, having been suppressed in 
1660. It is probable that they had at no time more 
than fifty pupils. Their locality was repeatedly changed, 
sometimes to avoid the troubles of the civil war, some- 



THE JANSENISTS' METHODS, 145 

times to escape persecution. For the most part they 
Avere held at Port Royal des Champs, in a secluded valley, 
hidden among the woods which border the park of Ver- 
sailles, sometimes at the houses of les Granges, of Ches- 
nai, or at the Chateau des Trous. When they w^ere de- 
stroyed in 1660 by the jealousy of the Jesuits, who were 
influential at court, the masters, persecuted and impris- 
oned, devoted themselves to the work of recording their 
experiences in writing. The principal teachers were — 
Nicole, whose thoughts are not unworthy to be ranked 
by the side of Pascal's. His views on education are best 
expressed in his book on the education of a prince. 
Next is Lancelot, the Melanchthon of the movement, 
the writer of admirable school-books, the ^^'^Methodes de 
Port-Royal," and the ^^Jardin des Racines Grecques," 
which taught Greek to Gibbon. The greatest of all is 
Arnauld, the polemist of the sect, who contributed to 
the logic and the general grammar some of their best 
pages. 

Their Methods. — One of the chief characteristics of 
the school of Port Royal distinguishes them at once 
from the Jesuits. They entirely discouraged emulation 
as being contrary to the principles of Christian charity. 
Pascal complained that this made the puj)ils a little 
slack and dull, but, compared with the frivolous con- 
tests of their rivals, it was a fault on the right side. 
Again, the classes never consisted of more than five or 
six children under the care of a single master. This 
gave the teacher opportunity to study the individual 
peculiarities of his pupils, and gave the fullest scope to 
the action of personal influence. At the same time 
over-familiarity was discouraged. The masters were 



146 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES, 

never to forget the reverence due to the indwelling 
of the Holy Spirit, and the boys were not allowed to 
tut oyer each other in their private conversations. A 
further difference between them and the Jesuits is that 
they founded their studies in the French language and 
not in Latin. The century which had intervened from 
the foundation of the Jesuit schools made it easier 
to do this, because during that time the French lan- 
guage as we know it had come into existence. The 
Jansenists set the example of making good translations. 
In 1647 they published the fables of Phaedrus, French 
and Latin side by side, ^^ Four servir a Men entendre la 
langue latine et a Men tradnire en frauQois." In 1647 
followed the translation of the ^'^ Andria," the ^'Adel- 
phi," and the ^^Phormio" of Terence, '^ rendues tres 
honnetes en y changeant fort ]pe\i de cliose.'" At a later 
time followed translations of the ^^ Captives of Plautus," 
of some of the letters of Cicero to Atticus, of a selection of 
Cicero's letters to his friends, of the Eclogues, Georgics, 
and some books of the ^neid of Vergil. Although 
many of these books appeared after the destruction of 
their schools, they were conceived and written during 
their existence, and arose directly out of the methods 
employed. 

Their Methods, continued. — The teachers of Port 
Royal set out with the principle that instead of making 
learning harsh and crabbed, and wasting valuable years 
over the first elements, it was right to assist the students 
as much as possible, and to make study if they could 
even more agreeable than play or amusement. For this 
reason they began with Frencli, but even here there was 
an innovation. In teaching the alphabet they called 



THE JANSENISTS' METHODS, 1 47 



the letters not by the names ordinarily given to them by 
grammarians, but by the sounds which they ultimately 
bear in the compounded words, so that only the vowels 
and diphthongs were pronounced alone, the consonants 
only in combination with them. This method is attrib- 
uted to Pascal, but it may be much older. To Port 
Koyal also is attributed the invention of steel pens, a 
great boon to children. After learning French the pu- 
pils read translations of the classics, and familiarized 
themselves with their matter. Then Latin was at- 
tacked. Translations were made from French into 
Latin, not in writing, but viva voce. Instead of learn- 
ing the elaborate grammar of Despautere, then in vogue, 
after making themselves acquainted with the simple de- 
clensions and conjugations, they learned lists of the in- 
dispensable nouns, pronouns, verbs, and adverbs. The 
rules were supplied by the teacher in his viva voce 
translation. Thus beginning by reading the authors in 
Latin which they had already learned to know in 
French, and being guided step by step by a sympathetic 
master, who had a small number of pupils, they had 
learned a good deal of the language by the age of ten or 
twelve. In the matter of Latin verses they were far in 
advance not only of their age, but of our own. 
Arnauld, in his '' Keglement d'Etudes,^^ says that it is 
waste of time to give the pupils verses to compose at 
home, *^ Among seventy or eighty boys perhaps two or 
three will get something from them.^' The rest will 
only torment themselves to no purpose. Arnauld ad- 
mits the composition of occasional extempore verses on 
a given subject. In Greek they were guilty of a great 
innovation. They taught it directly from the French, 



148 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 



and not through the medium of Latin. The Jesuits 
stigmatized this as impious. ^^Is it not," they said, 
*^to destroy at the same time the French and Latin 
languages, and to break the connection which has lasted 
for ages between France and Kome V Indeed, as Lan- 
celot remarks, and as many others have thought besides, 
Greek is easier for children than Latin. The words are 
hard, but the construction is simple. No book exists in 
Latin so easy and attractive for children as the Odyssey 
of Homer. There is much to be said for teaching Greek 
before Latin. This was the practice of the great 
Etienne, of Bishop Blomfield, and of James Mill. 

Their Method with Greek. — The garden of Greek roots, 
however useful in its day, would now justly incur severe 
criticism. It is a catalogue of simple Greek words, not 
roots in the strict philological sense, arranged in short 
rhyming stanzas with their meanings in French. M. 
Diibner, in a letter to Sainte Beuve (Port Eoyal, iii. 
620), has some admirable remarks on this book. 1. 
Lancelot takes too little account of usage. Very rare 
words are found side by side with very common words, 
and some of the words included have even been forged 
by the grammarians. 2. He mixes up poetical words 
with those in common use. 3. By the exigencies of 
rhyme he is often led to give a false meaning. Indeed 
the book is entirely out of date, and is rendered quite 
useless by the excellent dictionaries of modern times. 
Lancelot's rhymes contain about 3000 words, whereas 
those most necessary to be known are not more than 600 
or 700. M. Diibner says, at the same time, that other 
reforms which he himself proposed to the University of 
Paris, from 1856 to 1863, were similar to those inaugu- 
rated by the teachers of Port Royal, of the existence of 



AS TO MODERN LANGUAGES. 1 49 

which he was then ignorant. Among these were to at- 
tack Greek directly and not through the medium of 
Latin; to begin to read immediately after having learned 
the regular declensions and conjugations ; to learn the 
syntax by observation, and not to go over it systemati- 
cally until it had become familiar by usage ; to read a 
great deal, not to compose until the power of easy read- 
ing had been acquired ; to allow the pupils to choose 
their own subjects for composition according to the 
matters which most interested them in their reading ; 
to put an end to the prodigious abuse of written ver- 
sions. If this advice had been followed the classical 
languages would have had a better chance than they now 
have of holding their own in the French curriculum. 

As to Modern Languages. — Another feature of the Port 
Royal education is the important jDlace which they gave 
to modern languages. Lancelot wrote methods of learn- 
ing both Italian and Spanish, and four treatises on 
Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish poetry. But the 
advanced character of their teaching is best seen by their 
works on general grammar and on logic, two models of 
good sense applied to subjects, the very teaching of 
which was a novelty. The general grammar is due to 
the powerful mind of Arnauld. He attempted to pene- 
trate into the philosophy of the art of speech, the sci- 
ence of language. Bacon had before noted a work of 
this kind as a desideratum to be filled up. The time 
was not yet come when it could be done with success. 
Since the time of the Jansenists the discovery of San- 
scrit and its relations to Greek and Latin, of the Indian 
conception of grammar as opposed to the Alexandrian, 
the clear definition of the principal families of lan- 
guages, and the relegation of Hebrew to its proper place 



ISO EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

among them^ have led to the construction of a science of 
language which rests on fact and not on theory. Yet 
Arnauld deserves great credit for having seen that a sci- 
ence of comparative grammar was an intellectual possi- 
bility. 

As to Logic. — The Port Royal logic, perhaps the most 
celebrated of their works, owes its origin to the same 
commanding mind. It is based on the ^^Discours de la 
Methode'^ of Descartes, and on the essays of Pascal, 
"De TEsprit Geometrique," and " De I'Art de Persua- 
der.^^ It breaks at once with the formal logic of the 
Schoolmen. It divides the operations of the mind into 
four. 1. Conception (or ideas). 2. Judgment (or propo- 
sitions). 3. Reasoning. 4. Arrangement (or method). 
In treating of the syllogism it remarks that the greater 
part of the errors of mankind arise rather from reason- 
ing on false principles than from reasoning badly on the 
principles which they adopt. The chapter on fallacies 
is particularly instructive. The examples have constant 
reference to practical life or to the inculcation of good 
moral principles. The '^'^ Elements of Geometry/^ by 
Arnauld, which were long in use at Port Royal before 
they were printed, were so good that Pascal destroyed 
the treatise which he had composed on the same subject. 

The Discipline. — The discipline of Port Royal was not 
at all severe, and was maintained by the self-sacrifice of 
those who conducted it. The charge given to them by 
their master was : Speak little, bear mnch, pray more. 
The hours of work were three in the morning and two 
and a half in the afternoon. Books were dispensed with 
as far as possible, and great use was made of conversa- 
tion. Lessons were often given in the open air, by the 
side of a stream, or under the shade of trees. The edu- 



ANAL YSIS, 1 5 1 



cation of girls was cared for by Angelique Arnauld and 
Jacqueline Pascal as carefully as Nicole and Lancelot 
cared for tliat of the boys. What a contrast between 
the direct attack on the mind and intelligence of the 
pupil made in these schools and the ingenious waste of 
time practised by the Jesuits. The Jansenists were 
the best hope that French education ever had, and their 
success was too much for the jealousy of their rivals. 
Neither piety, nor wit, nor virtue could save them. In 
them a light was quenched which would have given a 
different direction to the education of France and of 
Europe. No one can visit without emotion the retired 
cloister which lies hidden among the forests of Ver- 
sailles, neglected by strangers, scarcely thought of by 
its neighbors, where the brick dove-cot, the pillars of 
the church, the trees of the desert, alone remain to 
speak to us of Pascal, Arnauld, Tillemont, Racine, and 
the Mere Angelique. 



ANALYSIS OF CHAPTER VIII. 

PAGE 

The Jesuit Teachers .135 

Their System 136 

Their Colleges 137 

The Course of Study 138 

The Daily Work 140 

Why they were Successful 142 

Criticism on their Method 142 

The Jansenists 144 

Their Methods 145 

Their Method with Greek 148 

As to Modern Languages 149 

As to Logic 150 

The Discipline 150 



152 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 



ROUSSEAU. 

"Emile." — Probably no work on the subject of educa- 
tion has produced so much effect as the ^^ Emile" of 
Rousseau. It appeared in 1762, just one hundred years 
before the appointment of the Public School Commis- 
sion, which may be regarded as a new departure in Eng- 
lish education. It rapidly made the tour of Europe and 
was translated into most European languages. It was 
regarded as the herald of a new age. About that time 
the accession of Frederick the Great, in 1740, had in- 
augurated an era in which philosophical theories of 
social regeneration were at last to be put into practice. 
The Seven Years' War was just at an end, and Europe 
was entering on a period of comparative peace, which 
was employed in most countries in attempting to remedy 
the evils of generations of misgovernment by arbitrary 
legislation. It might well be thought that the world 
stood at the threshold of a new order. The abuses 
which aftei'ward resulted in the French Eevolution 
were acknowledged, but it was thought possible to re- 
move them without so violent a convulsion. No won- 
der that much, far too much, was expected from educa- 
tion. Even Kant, the philosopher of Konigsberg, more 
regular in his habits than the town hall clock, gave up his 
daily walk and stayed at home to satiate his curiosity in 



''EMILE" PROPOSES NO THEORY OR PLAN. 1 53 

the new gospel of humanity. The effect of Voltaire and 
Rousseau upon the revolution was very different. Vol- 
taire, by nature a benevolent man, ever ready to sacrifice 
himself in the defence of innocence or weakness, spent 
his energies in destructive criticism, and has obtained 
the reputation of a cold heartlessness which he little 
deserved. Rousseau, weak, sentimental, and selfish, 
poured out in his writings that universal philanthropy, 
that love for the human race and sympathy with its 
sufferings, which he never showed in any action of his 
life. Thus his influence was much deeper and has been 
more lasting than that of Voltaire. 

It Proposes no Theory or Plan. — ^'Emile''' is not a 
constructive book. It is difficult to extract from it a 
definite theory of education, but its insight into the sor- 
rows of childhood and the shortcomings of the age, the 
enthusiasm which glows in its pages, the beauty of its 
flowing style, have been most stimulating to thought 
on educational subjects. Rousseau ^s views are not en- 
tirely original ; he belongs to the school of education 
which I have called Naturalistic. It is easy to trace 
the sequence of philosophical tradition from Rabelais 
and Montaigne to Locke and Rousseau. His similarity 
in many respects to Locke may have made his influence 
less felt in England than elsewhere. But he stands 
astride across the field of education. Nothing comes 
after him which is not affected by him. He is the pro- 
genitor of the educational theories of Kant, Basedow, 
Pestalozzi and Frobel. 

''Emile" Described.— It will be most convenient to 
give first an outline of his general principles, and then 
to proceed to a more detailed examination of his book. 



154 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES, 

It is divided into four main sections. The first deals 
with the earliest childhood, the second conducts Emile 
to his twelfth year, the third treats of the period from 
the twelfth year to the fifteenth, the last terminates 
with Emile's marriage. Eousseau^s first principle is 
that man is by nature good, therefore the business of 
education is to remove everything which is likely to 
stand in the way of the development of the human na- 
ture. Therefore education must only be negative. The 
object of education is not to form a citizen but a man. 
The poor man requires no education because he is suffi- 
ciently educated by the condition of his lot ; on the 
other hand the rich man must be educated for all the 
circumstances of life. There are three forces which ed- 
ucate a man : nature, men, and things ; of these only 
the second is in our power. 

The First Period Physical. — The earliest education is 
physical, and begins immediately after birth. We 
ought to satisfy all the physical wants of a child because 
they are natural, and allow no restraint of physical free- 
dom by unnatural compulsion, such as swaddling-clothes 
or the like. But at the same time we must draw a care- 
ful distinction between natural wants and imaginary 
wants ; those, for instance, of which the child demands 
the satisfaction by crying, and which have their founda- 
tion in temper. These we must pay no attention to, as 
they will grow into a habit. In this begins our first 
attempt at moral education. For this reason it is im- 
portant to study the speech, gestures, and looks of chil- 
dren. 

The Second Period, Things. — The second period of 
childhood begins with speech. We must not begin to 



THE SECOND PERIOD, THINGS. 1 55 

think too early of the child's future destination, but to 
allow the infant to amuse itself with childish games. 
Suffer the child to gratify its wishes as far as you can, 
for nature has given it the power of gratifying the 
wishes which are suitable to its age. The happiness of 
men upon earth depends upon the equilibrium between 
laill and can. On this also depends his freedom, and 
freedom is the highest blessing. This is the fundamen- 
tal principle of education. In order that we may be in- 
dependent of others our own powers must be properly 
developed. Yet if we develop these powers either too 
much or too little we shall make the child wilful. It is 
best to command as little as possible ; let the child be 
acted upon by necessity. Let it feel the pressure exer- 
cised by things and circumstances. Disobedience is its 
own avenger, and makes further punishment unneces- 
sary. At this age, during the second period, the most 
important thing is the training of the senses, but at the 
same time the awakening of the moral feeling is to be 
confined within the strictest limits. The' first moral 
idea of which the child is to become conscious is the 
idea of property, otherwise he may easily contract a 
tendency to deceit and falsehood. Even in this case, 
the only punishment which should be employed are the 
inevitable consequences of the transgression. Try to 
protect the pupil from evil consequences by removing 
from him every occasion of committing wrong. Exter- 
nal rewards implant the seeds of ambition, and are 
therefore to be rejected. During this second period in- 
struction is to be confined to what the child can under- 
stand, that is, to those things which can be perceived 
by the senses. Let it take the form of teaching things. 



156 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

The fittest subjects for instruction, are measuring, draw- 
ing, geometry, speaking, and singing. Books are alto- 
gether harmful. 

Third Period, Doing. — We now reach the third period, 
that is, from the twelfth to the fifteenth year. It is 
the season of serious work, for which the inborn desire 
of knowledge gives strength and pleasure. Let the ob- 
jects of instruction be actions, and employ no moral 
observations. Let the child^s knowledge rest on his own 
observation, and not on belief in authority. Let him 
learn industry and mechanical arts, and let each child 
be taught a manual trade. The fourth period begins at 
fifteen. Now the passions are awakened. Do not at- 
tempt to shroud these questions in mystery. Moral 
considerations now come into the foreground. The 
source of all passions is self-love. This is natural, but 
it easily degenerates into selfishness. Let the pupil be- 
come acquainted with the life of society, so as to be able 
to make a choice of the position which he wishes to 
hold in it. At any rate, this will give him the knowl- 
edge that men seek to deceive themselves and each other. 
Thus he will learn to despise some, but at the same time 
to compassionate others. The study of history exhibits 
men in their true light. With regard to religion he is 
only to learn the most general facts, and he is not to be 
educated for any particular sect. His taste is to be de- 
veloped by the study of literature or by the stage. 

Nature to be Followed. — Such are the general princi- 
ples which we find in ^' Emile.^^ Here, as in Rousseau's 
other works, we come across the leading idea that nature 
is of itself good, but has been spoiled by the work of man. 
God made the country and man made the town. Civiliza- 



NATURE TO BE FOLLOWED. 1 57 

tion and the framework of society have been the sources 
of all the misery of the human race. The only remedy 
for this mischief is to return once more to nature. The 
fallacy consists in this, that Rousseau^s nature never did 
and never could exist. It is the name of an ideal state 
of things, a paradise to which it may be that the human 
race is attaining by slow degrees, but to which it has 
never yet attained. Now let us follow out these princi- 
ples more closely in their details. First, children are to 
be suckled by their mothers ; this is a matter of the 
greatest importance. The mother is the proper nurse, 
the father the proper teacher, of his child. It is charac- 
teristic of Rousseau that, although he rated so highly 
the duty of a father, he himself, as soon as his children 
were born, deposited them in the foundling hospital, so 
that he never knew them or they him. The new-born 
child is to be perfectly unfettered, he is to have no 
padded cap or swaddling-clothes ; let him crawl about 
the room as much as he pleases. We must pay atten- 
tion to the child's cries and tears. Those tears, to which 
you pay so little heed, are the first signs of the relation 
of man to his environment. The first tears of a child 
are entreaties. If you pay no attention to them they 
will soon become commands. If, as is most probable, 
the father cannot undertake the education of his child, 
he must intrust the duty to some one else. What a 
sacred task is this ! A man can only direct the educa- 
tion of one child. He is to remain with him for five- 
and-twenty years. Therefore he must be young, even as 
young as possible. Indeed, it is better that he should 
be himself a child, that he may become the companion 
of his pupil, and gain his confidence by partaking of his 



158 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

amusements. Childhood and manhood have not things 
enough in common to form a very solid attachment at 
this distance. Children sometimes caress old men, but 
they never love them. 

Directions. — Emile is an orphan, without father or 
mother. He is to be brought up by a tutor of this 
intimate kind alone in the country. Locke advised that 
children should wear boots with holes in them to let in 
the water, and accustom the child to wet feet. Emile 
is to wear no shoes at all, but is to walk barefoot. He 
is never to use a candle in the dark, but to walk by 
instinct. He is to have no illness and to need no doctor, 
for whose art Rousseau expresses the greatest contempt. 
He is to bathe every day in cold, even in ice-cold water. 
Four rules are to be observed in the management of very 
young children. 1. We must allow them the use of 
everything which has been given them, and which they 
cannot use to a bad purpose. 2. In all physical matters 
we must help them, so as to supply their deficiency of 
knowledge or strength. 3. We must confine the assist- 
ance given to them exactly to what is necessary, and 
pay no attention to mere humors or foolish requests. 4. 
We must study carefully the speech and signs of chil- 
dren, so that, at an age when they cannot misrepresent 
themselves, we may distinguish in their wishes between 
that which springs directly from nature and that which 
is the result of imagination. We must not be in too 
great a hurry to make children speak. It is best that 
they should possess only a small vocabulary. It is a dis- 
advantage when the number of our words exceeds the 
number of our ideas, when we can express more than we 
can think. The practical good sense of peasants springs 



DIRECTIONS. 1 59 



to a great extent from the smallness of their vocabulary. 
They have fewer ideas but a clearer conception of their 
meaning. 

Directions, continued. — A child learns, at about the 
same time, to eat, to speak, to walk alone. Then 
begins the second period of education. The child must 
begin to learn to suffer. We must employ no leading 
strings, walking baskets, or stuffed hats. The child 
must learn the limits of his nature by enduring the pain 
of transgressing them. It is by this means that we must 
teach obedience, not as a moral duty. We must not 
reason with children of this age. We must remember 
that they are merely children, and not diminutive men. 
The first education must be purely negative. It consists 
not in teaching to distinguish virtue and vice, but in 
securing the heart from faults and the understanding 
from error. The educator is to be the passive spectator 
of the work of nature. His duty is to put the child on 
the track of discoveries which he is to make by himself. 
He is to interfere only with a few timid and reserved 
explanations to assist the pupil in interpreting the les- 
sons of nature. None of the intellectual exercises ordi- 
narily employed for children of this age find favor in 
Kousseau^'s eyes. His education is to be concerned with 
things alone. He forbids the study of languages. At 
the age of fifteen Emile is only to know one language. 
If he knew more he would have to compare ideas of 
which he is incapable. Maps of unknown countries 
have no real meaning for a child of this age. History is 
also proscribed, for the child cannot understand the re- 
lations of historical events. The whole of literature is 
banished from the curriculum. Emile, at twelve years 



l6o EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

of age, is scarcely to know what a book is. His whole 
education is to be physical. He is to be strong and 
healthy in order that he may become wise and sensible. 
He should be in constant motion. His clothes must be 
loose to allow for the growth of his body. He is to wear 
little or nothing on his head. He is to drink cold water 
when he is hot. He is allowed a good spell of sleep, 
because he needs it. He is to be as much at home in 
the water as on land. The faculties to be educated at 
this period are the senses. Let him learn to measure, 
number, weigh, and compare. In this Eousseau was in 
advance of his age. Basedow, and Pestalozzi, and most 
of the moderns, are agreed that the senses cannot be 
properly developed without education. We cannot learn 
how to touch, see, or hear without having been taught. 

Effects. — This kind of education has brought Emile 
to be twelve years old. Let us see to what point of de- 
velopment he has arrived. His bearing is full of confi- 
dence, his nature is free and open, but not overbearing 
or conceited, his speech is simple and always to the 
purpose, his ideas are limited but distinct, he knows 
nothing by heart but much by experience. The only 
book he has studied is the book of nature. His memory 
is not so good as his judgment, he knows only one 
language, but understands what he says. He is not the 
slave of routine or custom, to-day is not the same as 
yesterday. He cares nothing for authority or example, 
he does and says what pleases him. His ideas are suita- 
ble to his age. Order him to do anything, he will not 
understand you ; ask him to gratify you and he will 
hasten to do what you wish. He knows the limit of his 
powers, so that he never undertakes anything which he 



TO STUDY NATURE, l6l 

cannot do. He has an observing, penetrating eye. He 
never asks useless questions, but finds out things for 
himself. He knows no difference between work and 
play; they are both alike to him. He is first-rate in 
running, jumping, and judging distances. His talents 
and experience fit him to lead his companions. He 
takes the lead of others without wishing to command; 
they obey him without remarking it. He has lived the 
life of a child. He has attained completeness without 
sacrificing his happiness. Should death carry him off at 
this age we shall not have at the same time to bewail his 
life and his death. We shall be able to say, '' He has 
not, by our fanlt, lost anything which Nature had given 
him.'^ 

To Study Nature. — The interval between twelve and 
fifteen is to be devoted to positive instruction. The 
turmoil of the passions begins to threaten us. We must 
endeavor to turn aside their effects by labor of the mind. 
Rousseau recognizes the fact that no time must now be 
lost, but he does not excuse himself for having lost so 
much already. The instruction which he contemplates 
is not a very extended one. In the dispute, which is 
always renewed, as to whether education should be ex- 
tensive or intensive, whether it should aim at imparting 
much of one thing or something of many, Eousseau de- 
clares himself on the intensive side. Teach a little, and 
that little well. But this teaching is to proceed as 
far as possible by the way of nature, and is to be con- 
ducted as far as may be without books. ^'\ hate books, ^^ 
Rousseau cries; "they only teach people to talk about 
what they do not understand.^' We must rely on the 
child's natural thirst for knowledge. The world of in- 



l62 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 



tellect is as yet unknown to the child, his thoughts do 
not reach farther than his eyes, his understanding only 
extends as far as the space that he can measure. In the 
first activity of the intellect the senses must be the 
guides. The child^'s book is the world, and facts are 
the objects of instruction. Direct the attention of your 
pupil to the appearances of nature, and he will soon 
begin to desire knowledge, but if you wish to stimulate 
that desire you must not be too ready to satisfy it. 
Ask your pupil questions which are at the level of his 
comprehension, and let him answer them by himself. 
Then if he comes to possess knowledge it will not be be- 
cause you had put it in his mind, but because he has 
won it by himself. Let him not learn science, let him 
find it out by himself. If you allow authority to take 
the place of reason in his eyes, he will never use reason, 
he will only be the plaything of other people^s views. 

Specific Studies. — Using such methods as these, which 
are singularly in accordance with the best means of 
teaching employed in our own day, as they have been 
popularized by Pestalozzi and Frobel, Rousseau advises 
us to teach our pupil geometry, astronomy, geography, 
and physics. Astronomy is to be taught by observation 
of the heavens, and geometry in the same manner. 
Emile receives practical instruction in geography by 
having to find his way home from the centre of a thick 
forest at dinner time. He is made to interest himself 
in physics by the movements of an artificial duck swim- 
ming in a basin of water at a fair. Chemistry is taught 
him by the comparison of bad and good wine. Thus 
far we have been able to dispense with books, ^'^wi" 
says Rousseau, *^^if you mus.t absolutely have books, 



LABOR RECOMMENDED, 163 

there is one which furnishes in my opinion the most 
happy treatise of natural education. This book will be 
the first which my Emile will read. It alone will form 
for a long time the whole of his library, and it shall al- 
ways hold in it a distinguished place. It shall be the 
text to which all our conversation on natural science 
shall serve us as a commentary. It shall during our 
progress serve as a proof of the condition of our judg- 
ment, and as long as our taste remains unspoiled, the 
reading of it will always be pleasing to us. What then 
is this wonderful book ? Is it Aristotle, is it Pliny, is 
it Buff on? No, it is Robinson Crusoe. Robinson Cru- 
soe on his island, deprived of the assistance of his fellow- 
men and of the instruments necessary for all the arts, 
but nevertheless providing for his subsistence and even 
procuring some degree of comfort, this is an interesting 
object for every age, and which can be made pleasing to 
children in a thousand ways/' 

Labor Recommended. — The reading of Robinson Cru- 
soe is to impress Emile with the dignity of labor, and of 
the various occupations of mankind. Also the knowl- 
edge of a trade is to provide a shelter for him in time 
of need, when a revolution destroys his ordinary re- 
sources. ^'^We are approaching," Rousseau says, '^^tlie 
era of revolutions, who can say what will then become of 
you? Everything which men have made men can also 
destroy; the only ineffaceable characters are those im- 
pressed by nature, and nature makes neither princes, 
nor rich men, nor great lords. What then in this time 
of abasement will become of the satrap whom you have 
brought up for greatness alone? What in this state of 
poverty will become of this puhUcan who cannot live ex- 



164 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

cept oil gold? Happy is the man who can surrender the 
position which deserts him, and can remain a man in 
spite of fortune/^ Eousseau adds that in his opinion 
the great monarchies of Europe have but a little time to 
last. 

As to Trades. — How are we to classify these occupa- 
tions? The most respectable of all is agriculture, next 
is the trade of the blacksmith, next carpentry, and so 
on. Labor is a sacred duty for men in societies. Kich 
or poor, powerful or weak, every idle citizen is worth- 
less. Familiarity with labor will also have the advan- 
tage of diminishing the prejudice of the rich toward the 
poor. Still it is difficult to find a suitable trade. Emile 
is not to be a weaver or a stone-mason, which are stupid 
trades; nor a bricklayer or shoemaker, which are dirty 
occupations; nor a hair-dresser, who is the slave of civil- 
ization. He is not to be a lockmaker, but a carpenter. 

His Attitude. — With this ends the third period of 
education. Emile has but little knowledge, but it is all 
his own; he knows nothing by halves. The most im- 
portant thing is that there is much of which he knows 
nothing. He has an open, intelligent,, teachable mind. 
He does not even know the name of history, nor what 
metaphysics and morality mean. He knows the essen- 
tial relations between men and things, but nothing of 
the moral relations between man and man. He is la- 
borious, temperate, patient, firm, full of courage. His 
imagination never exaggerates dangers. He knows 
what death is, and when he must die he will die without 
a struggle and without a groan. He has all the virtues 
which have reference to himself. It is only the social 
virtues in which he is deficient. Thus far he has lived 



EMILE'S FEELINGS. l6^ 

content^ happy, and free as far as nature has permitted 
it. 

^ His Feelings. — From the period of fifteen to twenty, 
Emile is to become the most tender, the most senti- 
mental, the most religious of mankind. In his case 
there are special difi&culties. He has neither relations 
nor friends; he has no idea of love. Most people would 
say that a child should be taught to love from the very 
first. Eousseau allows Emile to grow up with a chasm 
in his heart. ^^ Here begins the real education. ^^ The 
birth of the passions comes in to help us, but they must 
be kept under proper control. It is the quintessence of 
wisdom to know how to do this, and we must try above 
all to teach two things : 1. The true relations existing 
among men, not only in the race but in individuals. 2. 
The regulation of all the affections of the soul accord- 
ing to the circumstances of their relations. The follow- 
ing maxims will help us: 1. The human heart is not 
naturally disposed to place itself in the position of those 
persons who are happier than ourselves, but only in the 
place of those who are more miserable. It follows from 
this, that to instruct a young man in the principles of 
humanity we ought not to make him admire the bril- 
liant lot of others, but show him by the dark side what 
he has to fear. It will then follow that he will make a 
road to happiness for himself, and will take his own 
line and not follow any one else. 2. A man only pities 
in the case of others those evils from which he does not 
believe himself to be exempt. So do not accustom your 
pupil to gaze at the sufferings of the unfortunate and 
the labors of the poor from the height of his own glory, 
and do not expect to teach him to be sorry for the poor 



1 66 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

if he considers them as strangers to himself. Make 
him understand that the lot of those unhajDpy people 
may perhaps be his own, that all their evils are under 
his feet, and that a thousand unforeseen and inevitable 
events may plunge him into them from one moment to 
another. 3.* The third maxim is, '' The pity which we 
feel for the misfortunes of another is not measured by 
the quantity of the evil, but by the tenderness we feel 
for those who suffer it.^' It is natural that a man 
should lay very little stress on the happiness of those 
whom he despises. Teach your pupil to love all men, 
even those who despise humanity. Manage so that he 
places himself in no class, but discovers his relations 
with all. Speak in his presence with emotion, and even 
with compassion, of the human race, but never with 
contempt. As a man yourself, take care not to dishonor 
the class to which you belong. 

Attaining Self-knowledge. — By these and similar ways 
you will penetrate into the heart of the young man, to 
work out of it the first motions of nature, and to take 
care that it shall unfold itself and beat for its fellow- 
men. Yet be on your guard against mingling personal 
interest with these emotions; and, above all, keep at a 
distance all vanity, emulation, and love of praise, all 
those feelings which compel us to compare ourselves 
with others. The cause of all our passions, the only one 
which is born with a man, and which never leaves him 
during life, is self-love. It is the original inborn pas- 
sion which precedes all others, of which all the rest are 
modifications. Self-love is good if it is subordinate to 
order. Each man must naturally take the greatest inter- 
est in its maintenance. We must love ourselves above 



RELIGION. 167 



everything, and, as the immediate consequence of this 
feeling, we love everything which serves for our preser- 
vation. We seek what is useful to us, but we love the 
man who is useful to us; we avoid what does us harm, 
but we hate him who does us harm. Emile has up to 
the present moment thought only of himself. When he 
first looks at his neighbor he will compare himself with 
him, and this comparison will make him desire to take 
the first place. At this point self-love is changed into 
selfishness, and all the passions connected with it appear 
in germ. In order to combat these evils, develop be- 
fore Emile the picture of society as a whole. Let him 
learn that man is good by nature, but that society spoils 
him. Let him find in men's prejudices the source of all 
their faults. Let him never scorn individuals, but let 
him despise the multitude. Let him learn that nearly 
all men wear the same mask, but that there are faces 
more beautiful than the masks which cover them. This 
knowledge of men is best learned from history, for we 
must see men in action. In life we only hear them 
speak, for they disclose their speech, but conceal their 
actions. In history the veil is drawn away, and we 
judge men by their deeds. Yet the most dangerous 
writers of history for the young are those who pro- 
nounce judgments. Let the young man learn the facts 
and judge for himself. In this way he will learn how 
to understand men. That your pupil may not believe 
that he is better than others, let him be shown how he 
is subject to the same weaknesses and follies as the men 
for whom he feels compassion. 

Religion. — Kousseau next goes on to say that many 
will have wondered why he has allowed the whole of the 



1 68 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

early life of his pupil to pass without speaking to him of 
religion. At the age of fifteen he did not know that he 
had a soul; perhaps even at eighteen it is too soon for 
him to learn it, for if he learns it before the proper time 
there is a danger that he will never know it. But as 
religion is the regulator of the passions, we ought now 
to instruct him in it. To what sect then shall we lead 
the child of nature ? We will not make him join any 
sect in particular, but we will place him in the position 
to choose that one to which the best use of his reason 
must lead him. This latest period of E mile's education 
is to be devoted to reading and the acquirement of taste. 
He is to study history and eloquence, and to frequent 
the theatre. He is to make up for lost time in the study 
of books. 

The Education of Woman. — The education of Emile, 
the ideal man, is followed by that of Sophie, the ideal 
woman. But Kousseau does not conceive that the 
woman is educated for any other purpose than to be 
suited to the man. He says, '''All the education of 
women ought to be relative to men. To please them, 
to be useful to them, to make themselves loved by them, 
to bring them up when they are little, to care for them 
when they are grown up, to counsel them, to console 
them, to render their lives agreeable and pleasant — such 
have been the duties of women in all time.'' If we 
do not accede to this principle we shall not go straight 
to our point. Sophie is to learn religion from her 
mother. She is to pay special attention to the duties of 
housekeeping, but in all this she is to be charming. 
She is to practise lace-making because she looks pretty 
while she is doing it; she is to let the dinner fall into 



ANALYSIS. 169 



the fire rather than stain her apron or her cuffs. Emile 
meets Sophie, falls in love with her, and, after two years 
spent in travelling, returns and marries her. 

We shall see something of the influence of Emile in 
future chapters. Eousseau tried to answer cant by par- 
adox. He violently opposed the current practices of his 
day in education by sketching out a scheme equally full 
of contradictions, and equally unsatisfactory in results. 



ANALYSIS OF CHAPTER IX. 

PAGE 

" Emile " 152 

It Proposes no Theory or Plan 153 

" Emile " Described 153 

The First Period, Physical 154 

The Second Period, Things 154 

Third Period, Doing 156 

Nature to be followed 156 

Directions 158 

Effects 160 

To Study Nature 161 

Specific Studies 162 

Labor Recommended 163 

As to Trades 164 

His Attitude 164 

His Feelings 165 

Attaining Self-knowledge 166 

Religion 167 

The Education of Woman 168 



I/O EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 



PESATLOZZI. 

Pestalozzi. — John Henry Pestalozzi was born on Jan- 
uary 12, 1746. His father died when he was five years 
old. '^ I grew up/' he said, " by the side of the 
best of mothers — as a mother's child. Year after year I 
never came out from behind the stove. In short, all 
means and stimulus for the development of manly 
strength, manly experience, manly ways of thinking, and 
manly practice we|*e wanting to me just in proportion as 
I needed them by the peculiarity and weakness of my in- 
dividual character. I saw the world only in the narrow 
confinement of my mother's chamber, and in the equally 
great confinement of my life in the school-room ; the 
real life of men was as strange to me as if I did not live 
in the world in which I dwelt. In all games I was the 
most awkward and most helpless of all my schoolmates, 
and yet I wished to excel in them above the rest. That 
often gave them occasion to laugh at me. One of them 
gave me the nickname ' Wonderful Harry from fool's 
town.' Most of them were pleased with my good temper 
and serviceableness, but they knew my one-sidedness 
and want of skill, and my thoughtlessness in everything 
which did not interest me much." He complains that 
his teaching was too much occupied with words and 
fancies. '^ That went so far," he says, ^''that we imag- 



INFLUENCE OF '' EMILE." 171 

ined in our boyish days that we could prepare ourselves 
by the superficial school knowledge of the life of Greek 
and Roman citizens for the restricted life of citizens in 
a Swiss canton." 

Influence of " Emile." — '^'^ When Rousseau's Emile ' ap- 
peared, my very unpractical imagination was seized by 
this very unpractical book. I compared the education 
which I received in the corner of my mother's chamber 
and in the school with that which Rousseau demanded 
for the education of his Emile. Home education and 
the public education of all classes seemed to me to be a 
crippled existence, which could be cured of the misery 
of its real position by the lofty ideas of Rousseau. Rous- 
seau's ideas of freedom awakened in me a desire to serve 
the people with greater earnestness. I determined to 
give up the career of a clergyman and to study law, 
which might open to me a sphere of greater usefulness 
to my country." A friend of Pestalozzi's, by name 
Bluntschli, dying at this time, sent for him on his death- 
bed, and said to him, ^^I am dying and you will be left 
alone. Take care to throw yourself into no line of life 
which may be dangerous to you from your good nature 
and over-confidence. Look out for a quiet way of life, 
and undertake no adventure unless you have by your 
side a cool-headed man who knows men and things, and 
on whom you may depend." Never was advice more 
urgently needed. 

Neuhof. — Shortly after this Pestalozzi fell ill ; on his 
recovery lie put away his books and determined to devote 
himself to an agricultural life. In the north of Switzer- 
land, not far from the town of Brugg and the castle of 
Hapsburg, he purchased some acres of barren land which 



172 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

he called Neuliof. He built a house in the Italian style 
better than he could afford. Here he married in 1769. 
The money necessary for the farm was advanced by a 
Zurich house of business. But the plan entirely failed. 
In Pestalozzi's words, the dream of his life, the hope of 
an important and beneficent sphere of labor, which was 
centred in a quiet, peaceful domestic circle, had entirely 
disappeared ; but his spirit was in no way broken. 

Opens a School for Poor Children. — Assisted by his 
noble-hearted wife he established an institute for the 
poor, to which children were sent from Ziirich, Berne, 
and Bale. He soon had fifty children to look after, 
chiefly homeless wastrels. His idea was to employ them 
in summer with field work, in winter with spinning and 
other handicrafts. He also attempted to teach them, 
and laid great stress on their practice in speaking ; but 
this plan also failed. The children were unaccustomed 
to discipline, and came to no good, and sometimes ran 
away as soon as they had received new clothes. Pesta- 
lozzi preferred to share his last crust with his children 
rather than give the institute up. He ''^ived like a 
beggar to teach beggars how men live." At last money, 
bread, wood, and everything failed, and the scheme had 
to be surrendered. His friends believed that it was all 
over with him, and that they could not help him any 
more. 

To be a Schoolmaster. — With his beggar's staff in his 
hand, and with no human assistance left for him in the 
world, he determined in himself, ^^I will be a school- 
master." He devoted himself to raising others from the 
abyss into which he had himself fallen. His wife stood 
by him in his trouble. He sought refuge witli Iselin, a 



PESTALOZZrS FIRST BOOK. 1 73 

Swiss writer of some reputation. He came to his house 
without shoes, having given the silver buckles to a 
beggar on the way. 

His First Book. — Pestalozzi's first work was published 
in Iselin's ^' Ephemerides." It was called ^^ Die Abend- 
stiinden eines Einsiedlers " (*^ The Evening Hours of a 
Recluse "). It consists of a series of detached thoughts 
on the principles of education. It is the first sketch of 
the edifice to the erection of which Pestalozzi devoted 
his life. Education in the family, love as the sun of the 
house, are the necessary conditions of all success in edu- 
cation. Knowledge of things and complete serviceable- 
ness in the affairs of life, the absence of mere swallowing 
of words, childish innocence and belief in God as the 
most penetrating influence in the life of men and as the 
Alpha and Omega of education — such are the main prin- 
ciples on which he insists. 

''Leonard and Gertrude." — A year later Pestalozzi wrote 
another work, which speedily became known through 
the whole of Europe. The Economical Society of Berne 
gave him their gold medal, Bonstetten invited him to 
come and work as a minister. Count Zinzendorf the 
Moravian asked him to Vienna, Leopold, Grand Duke of 
Tuscany, begged him to come and stay with him in 
Florence. Such in those days was the enthusiasm for 
new ideas among the rulers of the world. The name 
of this new work was '' Leonard and Gertrude — a book 
for the people." Pestalozzi wrote it in a few weeks, 
without knowing, as he says, what he was doing. ''I 
felt its value, but only like a man who feels the worth of 
happiness in sleep." 

Its Object. — The object of the book was to bring about 



174 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

a better education for the people, arising out of their 
true position and their natural circumstances. ** This 
book/' he says, *^*^was my first word to the heart of the 
poor and forsaken in the land. It was my first word to 
the mothers of the country, and to the heart that God 
gave them to be to their families what no man on earth 
can be in their place." Education begins, as in the 
scheme of Rousseau, with the cradle. Gertrude, the 
wife of the goodnatured but weak-minded Leonard, is 
the pattern of all mothers. Pestalozzi describes how she 
manages her home, brings up and educates her children. 
He wishes above everything to instil necessary knowledge 
into children by good elementary education. If this 
could only begin properly and go on properly, an 
entn*ely new race would grow up, independent in 
character, full of insight and cleverness. A people thus 
educated would be able to hold its own against oppres- 
sors. But elementary teachers were wanting who both 
could and would educate in this way. There were no 
seminaries or normal schools where such children could 
be educated. Therefore, Pestalozzi said, *' I will put 
the education of the people into the hands of the 
mothers. I will transplant it from the school to the 
house." But how can a mother teach what she does not 
under.stand? Pestalozzi tried to supply this want of 
knowledge and experience. A mother who follows, 
exactly the principles of his book could educate her 
children as well as if she were the possessor of all the 
sciences. 

At Stanz. — After the appearance of ^^ Leonard and 
Gertrude," Pestalozzi spent seventeen more years in 
Neuhof, making thirty years in all, He wrote several 



PESTALO^ZI AT STANZ. I75 

books and fouudecl a weekly paper called the "^Scliwci- 
zer Blatt." At one time lie joined the order of the II- 
luminati, but soon left them, because he found that 
they could not be trusted to fulfil their promises. But 
these were troubled times in Europe. By the year 1798 
the French Eevolution had produced serious results in 
Switzerland. An Helvetic Kepublic had been formed, 
governed by five directors, one of whom was Legrand, a 
friend of Pestalozzi's. He was an old man of eighty, 
full of enthusiasm for the improvement of the people, 
and he had been at one time a friend and a co-op- 
erator of Oberlin. Pestalozzi attached himself with 
eagerness to the new doctrines. He determined to be a 
schoolmaster, and was on the point of setting up an es- 
tablishment in Aargau; but on September 9, 1798, 
Stanz, a town on the Lake of Lucerne, was burned by 
the French. The whole canton of Unterwalden was laid 
waste, and a number of destitute orphans wandered 
about with no roof over their heads. Pestalozzi was sent 
by the Directory to be a father to these orphans. He 
went, accompanied by a housekeeper. In the convent of 
St. Ursula, near Stanz, he collected eighty beggar children 
from four to ten years of age. The account he gives of 
their condition is terrible. Some were wasted with dis- 
ease, some were full of mistrust, others of over boldness, 
others crushed by their misfortunes; a few children of 
tenderer nurture shrunk from contact with their rough 
companions. There was little ground to work upon, 
either of mind or body. They were very ignorant: 
scarcely one in ten knew the alphabet. Pestalozzi tried 
to combine learning with handiwork. He set children 
to teach children, according to the method afterward 



176 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

mtroduced by Bell and Lancaster. He had to bring 
discipline to bear upon this untutored mass. He saw 
that it was necessary to imitate the advantages which 
domestic education has over public education. By the 
proper employment of love he saw the condition of the 
children alter "as winter is changed to spring by the 
action of the sun/^ He was in the midst of his charge 
from morning till night. " Every assistance," he says, 
^ ^ everything done for them in their need, all the teach- 
ing that they received, came directly from me; my hand 
lay on their hand, my eye rested on their eye. My tears 
flowed with theirs, and my smile accompanied theirs. 
Their food was mine, and their drink was mine. I had 
nothing, no housekeeping, no friends, no servants; I had 
them alone. I slept in their midst; I was the last to go 
to bed at evening, and the first to rise in the morning. 
I prayed with them, and taught them in bed before they 
went to sleep." Having thus gained an influence over 
them, he tried to develop the germ of their better feel- 
ings. He found however that he could not rely on 
words alone, but was obliged to use corporal punishment. 
His Aim. — "My aim was," he says, "to carry the 
simplifying of all means of teaching so far that every 
common man can easily brmg himself to teach his chil- 
dren, and to make the school gradually superfluous for 
the first elements. I wished to bring to perfection the 
smallest thing that the children learned, to go back in 
nothing, so that they should never forget one word that 
they had learned, or write badly one letter that they had 
written well." In this school Pestalozzi himself ac- 
quired that intimate knowledge of children's nature 
which no man ever possessed to a larger extent. 



PES TALOZZI AT B URGDORF. I ']'J 

At Burgdorf. — This work was suddenly interrupted. 
In 1799 the French came back again and changed the 
buildings of the convent at Stanz into a military hospi- 
tal. Pestalozzi went away and refreshed himself on the 
hills of Gurnigel after the wearisome toil with which he 
had tended his beggar children during nine months. 
He still longed for the work of a teacher. He took a 
post in the school at Burgdorf near Berne^, and applied 
to the teaching of the lower classes the principles he had 
learned at Stanz. He stayed here rather less than a 
year, and then, with the help of three friends, set up an 
establishment in the old castle of Burgdorf, to which a 
number of poor Appenzell boys came as pupils, among 
them two who were afterward celebrated, Eamsauer and 
Egger. There were no books, no appliances of educa- 
tion; the old tapestry of the castle was made use of for 
object lessons. 

Another Book. — Here on January 1, 1801, Pestalozzi 
began a new book, '^Wie Gertrud ihre Kinder lehrt" 
(*^ How Gertrude teaches her children"). In this book 
he tries to solve the following problem: '' What would 
you do if you wished to give a single child the whole 
cycle of those acquirements and practical powers which it 
has need of so that it may by a careful use of its oppor- 
tunities become at unity with itself ?" or, in other words. 
What knowledge and practical powers are necessary for 
children, and how are they to be imparted ? The be- 
ginning of all knowledge is observation, the goal of it is 
clear comprehension. Pestalozzi says that the greatest 
service he has rendered to education is the recognition 
of observation, of the power of the senses, as the founda- 
tion of instruction. 



r/S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

The School at Burgdorf. — Let us read a description of 
the school at Burgdorf given by llamsauer, one of Pesta- 
lozzi^s most distinguished pupils: "All instruction was 
based on speech, number, and form. There was no reg- 
ular plan of studies, no fixed hours, but the same thing 
was generally taught for two or three hours together. 
We were about sixty boys and girls, from the ages of 
eight to fifteen, and were taught from eight to eleven in 
the forenoon, and from two to four in the afternoon. 
All teaching was confined to drawing, summing, and 
speaking. We did not either read or write, as we had 
no books for either purpose. We learned nothing by 
heart. For drawing we had no copies, only red chalk 
and boards, and while Pestalozzi repeated to us sen- 
tences out of natural history we drew whatever we 
pleased. Pestalozzi never saw what we were drawing; 
our clothes were covered with red chalk. In arithmetic 
the method was good, but there was little examination. 
Pestalozzi was too impatient with us to make us repeat 
or to ask us questions, and he was in such a hurry that 
he did not seem to care about individual children. His 
object lessons were good, but he had little method in 
them. He spoke loud and indistinctly, and did not 
wait for an answer. He made himself quite hoarse with 
shouting. The lessons began at eight and lasted till 
eleven, when, hearing the other children in the streets, 
we all ran away without taking leave. Although Pes- 
talozzi objected on principle to corporal punishment, he 
gave us every now and then boxes on the ear right and 
left. The children teased him very much. I pitied 
him and kept quiet, so that he was very kind to me. 
The first time I came into Pestalozzi 's school he kissed 



PESTALOZZI AT Y VERDUN. 1 79 

me and greeted me with heartiness, then he showed me 
a place, and did not speak to me any more the whole 
forenoon, but went on talking continually without stop- 
ping. As I understood nothing of it at all except 
*Ape/ ^ Ape' at the end of each sentence, and as Pes- 
talozzi was very ugly in appearance, with no necktie, 
without a coat, in long shirt-sleeves which hung down 
over his loosely waving arms and hands as he ran about 
like a madman in the room, I felt really terrified, and I 
could easily have believed that he was himself an ape. 
And I was so much the more afraid of him in the first 
days because he had given me a kiss on my arrival with 
his strong prickly beard, the first that to my knowledge 
I had ever received in my life. " Nothing could exceed 
the devotion of Kamsauer to his master. This picture 
has been given not as a set-off against Pestalozzi's gifts 
as a teacher, but as a living portrait of the man, and as 
an argument that great effects may be produced by love 
and insight even when accompanied by remarkable ec- 
centricity of manner. 

At Yverdun. — In 1802 Pestalozzi was chosen to go to 
^aris as a deputy to meet the First Consul Napoleon. He 
was treated by him with indifference, and did not suc- 
ceed in interesting him in his schemes. On his return 
he was established by the government of Berne at the 
monastery of Buchsee, but when that was placed under 
the direction of Fellenberg he left it and went to Yver- 
dun, where he established an European reputation. 
This little town became a place of pilgrimage for phi- 
lanthropists from all parts of Europe. Some of the 
most famous school reformers in Germany came from 
Switzerland. In 1809 Pestalozzi had under him fifteen 



l8o EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

teachers and 165 pupils from all parts of Europe and 
America, and thirty-two grown-up teachers to learn the 
method. Perhaps the best part of the method was the 
closeness of the family life. Teachers and scholars 
slept and ate together, living entirely in common under 
circumstances of great difficulty. After 1810 the pros- 
perity of the establishment began to decline, chiefly 
through disagreement among the teachers. It was found 
that the school did not fit the pupils for the life which 
they were expected to lead. Pestalozzi hoped to trans- 
plant the school once more to Neuliof, but it was found 
impossible. 

At Neuhof to Die. — In 1825 he was obliged to give 
up, and withdrew at the age of eighty to his original 
home of ISTeuhof, where his grandchildren lived. Here 
he wrote the ^'^Schwaneugesang," his parting song, in 
which he gave to the world a sketch of his life, and un- 
folded his last principles of education. He died on 
February 17, 1827. His last words were, ^^\ forgive 
my enemies ; may they find peace as I am going to ever- 
lasting peace. I would willingly have lived a month 
longer for my last works, but I thank the Providence 
which calls me away from the life of this world. And 
you, my children, remain quietly by yourselves, and 
seek your happiness in the peaceful circle of home life." 

Pestalozzi's Principles. — We have now to consider what 
were Pestalozzi's principles of education. They were 
founded entirely on the following of nature. The end of 
education he considered to be the harmonious develop- 
ment of all the natural powers. If we provide for this 
harmonious development we shall have given the educa- 
tion which we desire. There is a certain order deter- 



PESTALOZZrS METHOD. l8l 

mined for us which our development should follow, there 
are certain laws which it should observe, there are im- 
pulses and tendencies implanted in us which cannot be 
extinguished or subdued. The natural course of our 
development comes from these impulses. A man wishes 
to do everything which he feels himself strong enough to 
do, and in virtue of this indwelling impulse he wills to 
do this. The feeling of this inward strength is the ex- 
pression of the everlasting, inextinguishable, unalterable 
laws which lie at the bottom of a man's nature. These 
laws are different for different individuals, but they have 
a certain harmony and continuity for the human race. 
Now that alone can be considered of educative power 
for a man which grapples with all the faculties of his 
nature — with heart, mind, and hand. On the other 
hand, any one-sided influence which deals only with one 
of these faculties by itself, undermines and destroys the 
equilibrium of our forces, and leads to an education 
which is contrary to nature. If we wish to raise and 
ennoble ourselves we must accept as the true foundation 
for this effort the unity of all our human powers. What 
God has joined together let not man put asunder. 

The Method. — Pestalozzi tells us that for a long time 
he strove to find the means by which a man may make 
clear and intelligible to himself the objects which come 
before his eyes. He came to these conclusions. He 
will direct himself to three points of view : (1) how 
many objects move before his eyes, and of how many 
kinds ; (2) how they look, what is their form and out- 
line ; (3) what are they called, hoAV may they present 
themselves to us, by a sound or word. Now a man who 
has passed through these stages has acquired three pow- 



1 82 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

ers : (1) the power to represent dissimilar objects ac- 
cording to their form and according to their contents ; 
(2) the power to separate these objects according to their 
number, and to represent them as one or many ; (3) the 
power to increase the vividness of the representation of 
an object, ah^eady marked by form and number, by 
means of speech, and so to render it impossible to for- 
get. 

Means of Instruction. — Therefore, the elementary 
means of instruction are three — number, form, and 
speech. Let us proceed a little further. The first 
means of teachmg is by sound. This may be divided 
into three kinds : (1) tone-lore, the forming of the or- 
gans of speech to pronounce different sounds ; (2) word- 
lore, the means of knowing individual objects by spe- 
cially assigned names ; and (3) speech-lore, the means by 
which we exactly express ourselves about objects known 
to us, and about everything which we know about them. 
Tone-lore is of two kinds — speaking-tone and singing- 
tone. Word-lore consists of lists of names of the most 
important objects from all the natural kingdoms, and 
of the vocations and relations of mankind in the world. 
These lists of words must be given to the child to learn 
so soon as he has finished his ABO. In speech-lore the 
great object to aim at is exactness of expression, so as to 
be able carefully to distinguish different objects from 
each other. When these first foundations have been 
laid, we can apply them to the most important objects of 
human inquiry — to the description of the world, to his- 
tory, to nature. 

The second means of instruction is form. This is to 
be taught by observation; and in the knowledge of form 



PESTALOZZrS INFLUENCE ENORMOUS. 1 83 

we have three degrees, obtained by measuring, drawing, 
nd writing. What Pestalozzi calls measuring is real ly 
geometrical drawing, which holds an important place 
among modern methods of instruction. It begins with 
the divisions of the square and goes on to those of the 
circle. At first the child is not to draw himself, but 
merely to follow, and to understand the measurement 
of the divisions. Drawing by the pupil is to come later, 
when the child has been taught to understand and to 
practise the simplest notions of geometry; then he is to 
proceed to writing. Writing is to be taught very grad- 
ually, first parts of letters, then single letters, then com- 
plexes of letters formed into words. 

The third branch of elementary teaching is number. 
It has this advantage. Sound and form may sometimes 
be inaccurate and lead to misconception, but number 
never can do this. The results it leads to are always 
certain and unassailable, and therefore it is one of the 
most important means of education. Reckoning, in its 
simplest form, is the putting together or the separation 
of unities: one and one makes two, one from two leaves 
one. Teach this by the use of natural objects, stones, 
or peas. It is possible also to bring form and number 
into harmony by the use of reckoning-tables. 

His Influence Enormous. — Beyond these simple parts 
of instruction — reading, writing, and arithmetic — Pesta- 
lozzi does not go; but there is no doubt that his influ- 
ence over education was enormous. Poor, and without 
learning, he tried to reform the science of the world. 
He was enthusiastically supported and scornfully abused. 
His place among educationalists is now no longer a mat- 
ter of doubt, and it has grown year by year since his 



I $4 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

death. His methods of teaching words, forms, and 
numbers were accepted. Speaking was taught by pict- 
ures, arithmetic was reformed; methods of geometry, 
of natural history, of geography, of singing, and draw- 
ing were composed after Pestalozzi's example. Still 
greater was the influence which he exerted over the gen- 
eral theory and practice of education. It is due to him 
that we have accepted as a truth that the foundation of 
education lies in the development of the powers of each 
individual. 

The method which begins by educating the senses, 
and which through them works on the intellect, must 
be considered as derived from his teaching. The kin- 
dergarten of Frobel is only the particular development 
of a portion of his general scheme. His example also 
gave a strong impulse to the teaching of the poor and 
destitute. Schools for the blind and for the deaf and 
dumb followed his reforms. Care was taken for poor 
children and cripples; evening schools, Sunday schools, 
schools for trades and employments were derived from 
this initiative. In national schools methods of disci- 
pline were improved, and the care of individual children, 
according to their capacity, became the rule instead of 
the exception. A new library of children's literature 
appeared in Europe. 

We live so completely in the system which Pestalozzi 
helped to form that it is difficult for us to realize how 
great a man he was. He may have had many faults as 
an organizer and an instructor, but he gave his life for the 
lambs of the flock. He was the first teacher who incul- 
cated unbounded faith in the power of human love and 
sympathy. He divested himself of everything, and 



ANALYSIS. * 185 



spent the whole of a long life in the service of the poor 
and lowly, subduing himself to those whom he taught, 
and entering into the secrets of their minds and hearts. 
He loved much, and many shortcomings may be for- 
given him. 



ANALYSIS OF CHAPTER X. 

PAGE 

Pestalozzi 170 

Influence of " Emile " . 171 

Neuhof 171 

Opens a School for Poor Children 173 

To be a Schoolmaster , 172 

His First Book ................ 173 

" Leonard and Gertrude " i > . . . 173 

Its Object 173 

AtStanz 174 

His Aim 176 

AtBurgdorf 177 

Another Book 177 

The School at Burgdorf 178 

At Yverdun 179 

At Neuhof to Die 180 

Pestalozzi's Principles 180 

The Method 181 

Means of Instruction 182 

His Influence Enormous 183 



1 86 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 



KA}^T, FICHTE, AND HERB ART, 

The Metaphysicians. — Besides the different schools of 
educationalists of which we have given an account — the 
Humanists, the Realists, the Naturalists — still a fourth 
remains to be described, the Scientific, or Metaphysical 
school. It is entirely a growth of modern times. Some 
theory of education must form a part of every complete 
philosophical system. Whether we approach the analy- 
sis of the powers of the mind from the side of psychol- 
ogy or physiology, we are led to form a theory of their 
growth and of the influences which affect them, based 
either on the one or the other of these sciences. Per- 
haps the conclusions of our own time on this subject 
will be found to depend mainly on physiological knowl- 
edge. The three philosophers whose names stand at 
the head of this chapter approached the science of edu- 
cation through the study of psychology. With Kant 
and Fichte it formed but a minor and subordinate part 
of their investigations, with Herbart it was the main 
object of inquiry. To him the chief use of philosophi- 
cal speculation was to frame a right theory of educa- 
tion. Kant wrote no special treatise on education. 
He lectured at the University of Konigsberg on ped- 
agogics, as on many other subjects; and notes of these 
lectures were published by one of his pupils just be- 



KANT. 187 



fore his death. These have been republished in con- 
nected fornix enlarged by selections from other parts of 
his works. We will attempt to give an account of his 
views as methodical as possible, considering the frag- 
mentary manner in which they are presented to us. 

Kant. — Man is the only being that needs education. 
By education we mean nurture, discipline, and instruc- 
tion. None of these are required in the same degree by 
animals. Only by education can man become a man. 
He is nothing but what education makes of him. It is 
a misfortune that men are often educated by people 
worse than themselves. If a being of a higher order 
could educate us we should reach a much greater per- 
fection. We should learn a great deal if experiments 
were made in education. It is strange how little inter- 
est men take in these matters, for every one can see how 
he has been neglected in his youth. If we believe in 
the perfectibility of human nature, then education must 
fill us with bright hopes. Each generation will be bet- 
ter than the last, until mankind reaches a standard 
which it could not have anticipated or imagined. In 
man lie the germs of various capacities. These we must 
try to develop in due harmony and proportion, that each 
man may obtai^ the perfection of which he is capable. 
Yet we must grasp the truth that the complete attain- 
ment of destined perfection is not for the individual, 
but for the race. Education is an art which must be 
brought to perfection by the practice of many genera- 
tions. Each generation can profit by the experience of 
its predecessors. Education may be either mechanical 
(or empirical) — that is, without plan, merely following 
circumstances, or judicious (scientific). Scientific edu- 



EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 



cation is far preferable to the other. One most impor- 
tant principle of education is that children should not 
be educated for their present condition, but for the 
future of the human race, which may possibly be better. 
They must be educated in accordance with the idea of 
humanity and its destination as a whole. Notwith- 
standing the great importance of this principle, neither 
princes nor parents are anxious to bring about this re- 
sult. Parents look merely to present advantages, princes 
to the convenience of their government. Therefore 
schools ought not to be left to them, but placed under 
the guidance of the most enlightened experts. Schools 
of experiment for trying new methods of education are 
even more important than normal schools for the train- 
ing of teachers. Education is above everything an ex- 
perimental science. 

Further Statement. — Education must include various 
elements. From one point of view it will comprise — 1, 
discipline; and 2, culture, discipline being the taming 
of the wild nature, culture comprising both instruction 
and the formation of the mind ; 3, civilization, to make 
a man fit for the society of his fellow men; and 4, 
morality, to make men good. Again, education may be 
either public or private. The former is preferable. 
Children brought up at home will first learn and then 
propagate the faults of their parents. The great prob- 
lem of both these forms of education is how to combine 
compulsion with liberty. Again, education may be 
either physical or practical. The first is concerned with 
that which men have in common with animals; practi- 
cal education fits a man for life. This may be divided 
JBto three parts : 1, the scholastic— mechanic, or purely 



WORK IS NECESSARY TO EDUCATION. 1 89 

didactic; 2, the pragmatic, to teach prudence in affairs; 
3, the moral, to teach virtue. They follow each other 
in the order here given. 

With regard to early physical education Kant agrees 
in the main with the advice of Locke and Rousseau. 
He objects to mechanical aids for children, leading- 
strings, and the like. He says that we ruin our natural 
capacities by the use of instruments: we use a rule when 
we might measure by the eye, a watch when we might 
tell the time by the sun, a compass when the stars ought 
to give us direction. We ought to cultivate a child's 
natural faculties as soon as possible. Kant is here in 
close agreement with Pestalozzi and Frobel. 

Work is Necessary to Education. — To pass to the culti- 
vation of the spirit — this is of two kinds: 1, physical or 
practical; 2, pragmatic or moral. The physical educa- 
tion of the spirit is either free or scholastic. The free 
cultivation is provided for by games, the scholastic by 
work. There are many who think that everything can 
be taught in playing. Men are by nature lazy, and they 
must be taught to work. Work is not agreeable in it- 
self, but it conduces to an end outside itself; games, on 
the other hand, are agreeable, and are an end in them- 
selves. Man is the only animal that is obliged to labor; 
he requires all kinds of things, which can only be pro- 
vided by toil and hard work. The necessity of work is 
the gTeat blessing of our lot. If Adam and Eve had re- 
mained in Paradise they would soon have got tired of it. 
A child must not be taught to look on everything as 
play. Even if he does not see the use of the work, he 
will get a great deal of good by it. In the cultivation 
of the spirit we must develop the higher qualities first. 



1 90 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

the lower only in reference to them; for instance, the 
will and the imagination as subordinate to the under- 
standing. Memory has little value by itself. It is like 
a pack-horse, fit to carry materials while others build. 
Understanding is the knowledge of the universal, judg- 
ment is the application of the general to the particular. 
Some things can only be learned by memory History 
is not one of them. The main use of it is to practise 
the understanding in pronouncing judgments. 

"Know and Can." — In teaching children we should 
try gradually to join together "know and can/' knowl- 
edge with practical power. Of all sciences mathematics 
is the best for this purpose. A¥e should also join to- 
gether knowledge and speech. This is done by teaching 
eloquence and fluency. But the child must learn to 
distinguish knowing from thinking or believing. By 
this means we shall form a right understanding and a 
right if not a refined or delicate taste. 

Moral Training. — Moral training depends not on dis- 
cipline but on maxims. All is spoiled if we base it on 
threats or punishments. Children must accustom 
themselves to act according to certain rules. If a child 
tells a lie, do not punish him, treat him with contempt; 
tell him that he will not be believed in future. If you 
punish a child when he does ill, and reward him when 
he does well, he acts not for the good or the evil, but 
for the reward. Morality is something so holy and so 
elevated that we must not throw it away and place it in 
the same rank with discipline. The first duty of moral 
education is to form the character, and character con- 
sists in a readiness to act according to maxims. Max- 
ims are subjective laws springing from the understand- 



MORAL TRAlNmG. 19 1 

ing of men. If you wish your children to have charac- 
ter, they must be accustomed to act by rule. Men who 
do not act by rules cannot be depended upon. 

The most important thing for a child's character, es- 
pecially a school child's, is obedience. This is twofold, 
referring either to the absolute, or to the sensible and 
well-understood will of a teacher. Absolute obedience 
comes from compulsion, relative from free-will and con- 
fidence. This last is much the best. Still children 
must in some general matters show an absolute obedi- 
ence. The teacher must exhibit no preference. Chil- 
dren should be encouraged to act from inclination, but 
they must sometimes be made to act from duty. Men 
have to perform duties in after life, and they must be 
induced to begin when young. Punishments are of two 
kinds — physical and moral. Moral punishment is in- 
flicted where we act on a child's natural desire for love 
and affection, when we refuse to speak to him and 
treat him with contempt. Physical punishment con- 
sists either in denying him what he wants, or giving 
him what he does not want. Punishment should al- 
ways be accompanied with an exhibition of moral feel- 
ing. It should not be simply mechanical, or it will fail 
in its effect. Truthfulness is the chief point in the 
foundation of a good character, but it cannot be secured 
by punishment. You must make a child ashamed of 
telling a lie. Contempt is the only fitting punishment 
for this offence. Sociability is important for children. 
They should be taught to be friendly with each other, 
and not to be too much alone by themselves. Teachers 
often neglect this. Children should be prepared for the 
sweetest enjoyments of life. They should be open 



195 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

and as cheerful in their look as the snn. If they are 
happy they stand the best chance of being good. Many 
think that the years of childhood are the best and most 
pleasant of a man^s life. This is not so. They are 
years of trouble, because children are under discipline; 
they often have no friends and no freedom. 

Methods of Teaching. — Kant has some excellent re- 
marks upon the methods of teaching. Rules and exam- 
ples should go together, the rules slightly preceding. 
The powers of the mind are best cultivated when we do 
things for ourselves ; for instance, when we apply rules 
of grammar which we have learned, as when we make 
a map for ourselves. Self-taught men learn best, but few 
are capable of this. To educate the reason we must 
proceed after the manner of Socrates. He called himself 
the midwife of the mind. We must help the reason to 
come to birth. For this purpose we must use the 
method of question and answer. It is slow, but effica- 
cious. Kant, in his treatise on logic, classifies the 
methods of teaching under three heads : 1, acroamatic, 
where the professor simply teaches ; 2, erotetic, where 
both pupil and teacher ask questions ; 3, catechetical, 
where the teacher alone asks questions. It is the second 
of these which Kant prefers. 

Knowledge of Mankind. — The last quality which a 
man acquires is knowledge of the world, and it only 
stands second in value to morality. It consists in con- 
cealing yourself and seeing through others. For the 
first we must use propriety of behavior, and that is a 
useful possession ; also dissimulation is useful, that is, 
the concealment of our faults, but it is only allowable in 
certain cases. Knowledge of the world concerns the 



RELtGlO]^. I93 



temperament, but morality is part of the character. 
Sustine et abstine: bear and forbear. The first step is 
to subdue the passions. We must encourage sympathy 
in children, but not over-sensibility, as it makes them 
weak in character. A good motto for the conduct of 
the character is festina lente: without rest, without 
haste. We must also impress upon children the duties 
they have to fulfil as far as possible by example. These 
duties are of two kinds — those of a man toward himself 
and those toward others. The duties of a child toward 
himself are cleanliness, purity, sobriety, and the most 
important safeguard of all is the possession of a certain 
self-respect which he values beyond everything else. A 
man's duty toward himself is often neglected in compar- 
ison with his duty toward others, but in critical moments 
it is the only thing that will keep him straight. If it is 
asked whether man is by nature morally good or bad we 
must reply, neither the one nor the other ; for by nature 
man is not a moral being at all. He only becomes such 
when his reason is raised to the comprehension of notions 
of duty and law. On the other hand, it may be said that 
he has within himself temptations to every kind of evil, 
impulses, and instincts which entice him, although his 
reason urges him in the opposite direction. He can only 
become morally good through virtue — that is, through 
self-command. The laws of social duty should be care- 
fully taught to children ; it is more important that they 
should act from an idea of duty than from a tender or 
compassionate heart. 

Religion. — It is a great question how soon we ought 
to teach children religion. It would be an advantage if 
we could lead children up gradually from the contem- 



194 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

plation of nature to the idea of God. But this is im- 
possible. If they are not taught about God from you 
they will hear of Him from others. We must content 
ourselves with securing that religion is not mere imita- 
tion. The idea of God is best taught by the analogy of 
a father ; we shall then be able to regard mankind as a 
family. What is religion? It may be defined as the 
law within us in so far as it influences us through a law- 
giver and a judge; it is morality applied to the knowledge 
of God. Religion is nothing without morality. Teach 
a child at first nothing of theology. Religion based 
upon theology can never contain any moral element. 
Morality must come first, theology will follow. A child 
must fear God — 1, as the Lord of life and of the whole 
world ; 2, as the Provider for men ; 3, as the Judge of 
mankind. Kant concludes with a solemn warning as to 
the great care which must be taken of a youth just at 
the time when he is becoming a man. This should be 
read and meditated or by all who have the care of 
instruction in their hands. 

Fichte. — The educational theories of Fichte could not 
be fully explained without a more complete exposition 
of his general system of philosophy than our present 
purpose admits of. Indeed, he can hardly be said to 
have formulated a definite theory of teaching, and the 
attempts made by his pupils to carry his precepts into 
effect led them far astray from the dogmas of their mas- 
ter. In moral teaching he mainly adopted the views of 
Kant ; in practical methods he was an ardent disciple of 
Pestalozzi, whom he regarded as a second Luther. The 
point on which he laid most stress was the development 
of the individual character, the life. Men, he said, were 



HERB ART. 19 c; 



naturally good, and the object of education was to de- 
velop this germ of goodness and to form an independent 
and self-sufficient individuality. But the great service 
which he rendered to education was the passionate ad- 
vocacy of a national system of instruction in his speeches 
to the German people. He saw the German nationality 
torn asunder by divisions, ground under the heel of a 
French invader, and he perceived that the true way to 
its regeneration lay in a really national system of edu- 
cation. This system was to be common to every one 
alike — rich and poor, male and female. Its conduct 
was to be the business of the State ; it was not only to 
be intellectual, but moral, not only religious, but aes- 
thetic. Fichte dealt toe much in generalities to be the 
author of a working plan, and his views have never been 
exactly carried out. But there is no doubt that the 
force with which he asserted that all classes in the com- 
munity should be educated, and that it was the duty of 
the State to see this done, had a great effect in framing 
that magnificent system of instruction which Germany 
offers as an example to the world. 

Herbart. — Herbart, on the other hand, may be re- 
garded as the founder of modern scientific pedagogics. 
In the list of German philosophers he stands as the 
founder of modern German psychology. To estimate the 
value of his philosophical speculations must be left to 
others, but there is no doubt that he was the first to see 
that a national system of education must be founded 
on a true psychology, and, indeed, that it is impossible 
to form a scheme of education complete in all its 
branches until we have arrived at a certain knowledge 
of the true bases of ethics and psychology. Education, 



ig6 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

regarded from this point of view^ is the sum of all the 
other sciences. The fundamental principle of educa- 
tion is the teachableness of the pupil. Not that all 
children can be taught everything. Their capacity is 
bounded by the limits of their individuality and by the 
circumstances of place and time. Although the educator 
cannot effect all that he wishes, he must set his level of 
aspiration as high as possible. The end of education is 
virtue. This is the realization in each person of the 
idea of inward freedom; and this inward freedom is a 
relation between two things — insight and will. The 
duty of the teacher is to develop both of these factors, 
in order that a permanent relation may be established 
between them. Psychology shows us in what order the 
faculties of the child are found to develop. First we 
have the power of sensation, then the memory, which 
retains traces of these and can reproduce these traces. 
The constant questions of the young child are indica- 
tions of the nascent power of judgment ; an attempt to 
bring his ideas under higher generalizations, and to give 
them names. Then his personal likes or dislikes mani- 
festing the growing will, which is dangerous if not con- 
trolled from the first. The sesthetic judgment which, 
according to Herbart's philosophy, is the source not 
only of the higher pleasures of art, but of morality, is 
developed last. Soon the child asks fewer questions 
and devotes himself to action, seeking more and more 
the companionship of children of his own age. His in- 
dividuality becomes more pronounced. In attempting 
to understand the capacity of children we are met with 
this difficulty, that they are so deeply affected by the 
environment in which they find themselves. They have 



HERB ART. 197 



one character for their family, another for the school, 
another for their companions at play. Each of these 
may become, under certain circumstances, the determin- 
ing character of their lives. Herbart divides education 
into three branches — ^government, instruction, and dis- 
cipline. 

1. Government. — A child comes into the world with- 
out will, incapable of moral action. He is led by a nat- 
ural impulse to actions which may be harmful both to 
others and to himself. These actions it is necessary to 
restrain, but in doing this we must avoid conflict. We 
must only keep this end in view to secure order and to 
foster the tender soul. The chief means for effecting 
this object is to keep the child employed. Such is the 
end of government ; what are the means to be employed ? 

First, threats ; but these may be of no effect upon a 
strong nature, and they may dangerously cripple a weak 
one. Therefore, they must be used with great caution. 
Second, surveillance ; but this is a burden to both par- 
ties ; it is also dangerous to the child, because it pre- 
vents him from learning a thousand things by himself, 
and because the closer it is the more it will weaken or 
disturb his character. AVatchfulness is only suited for 
the very earliest years, or for seasons of especial danger. 
There remain, then, two engines of government — ^au- 
thority and love. Authority must be that of a superior 
character, love must be grounded on sympathy, and 
must not degenerate into weakness. 

2. Instruction. — The value of a man lies not in 
knowledge, but in will. But the will has its roots in 
the intellect, and therefore the sum of a man's intel- 
lectual acquisitions are of importance to his character. 



EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 



Instruction, therefore, comes before discipline, and they 
have this in common, that they are concerned with the 
fnture, whereas government has to do only with the 
present. The end of instruction is the production of 
virtue, but a nearer object is the production of many- 
sided interests. An entirely uneducated person cannot 
be virtuous ; the brain must be first aroused. Instruc- 
tion must be carried out first with energy, in order that 
the interest may be awakened ; then with breadth, in 
order that the interest may be many-sided ; and lastly, 
with unity of purpose, in order that the intelligence 
may not be distracted. The unity of the individual 
must not suffer by the many-sidedness of the training 
he receives. The mind is capable of studying intensely 
one thing after another. But we must take care that 
these different acquirements do not merely rest side by 
side, but that they meet in the unity of the individual 
consciousness. Consciousness is the bond which holds 
these attainments firmly together ; it is the middle 
point to which they all converge. A piece of knowl- 
edge thoroughly acquired is clear and intelligible; it 
becomes dim when compared with other knowledge 
which does not belong to it. Therefore for the sake of 
clearness we must keep our lines of knowledge separate. 
Again, complete self-consciousness is clear and undis- 
turbed. A clear self-consciousness, combined with 
many-sided acquirements, is the result of system, and is 
attained by method. 

What Good Teaching Does. — Herbart explains at 
length, and in the phraseology of his school, that all 
teaching to be effective must set the mind of the learner 
in independent motion. Perception of the matter 



WHAT GOOD TEACHING DOES. 1 99 

taught is not enougli ; there must be apperception, that 
is, the learner must recognize it and assimilate it to his 
previous experience. He must add something of his 
own to the ideas presented to him by his instructor. 
Interests may be divided into six classes. 1. The em- 
piric interest, by which we perceive the manifold phe- 
nomena which the world presents to us ; 2, the specula- 
tive interest, by which we become devoted to the pur- 
suits of some particular science ; 3, the aesthetic interest, 
by which we attach ourselves to painting, sculpture, 
poetry, either lyric or dramatic, or music ; 4, the sym- 
pathetic interest, by which we care for our famil}^ 
friends, or countrymen, but not for the human race in 
general ; 5, the social interest, by which we attach our- 
selves to political parties and cliques ; 6, the religious 
interest, which induces us to become attached to par- 
ticular dogmas or sects. Each of these interests, al- 
though good in itself, may become narrow and one- 
sided. This it is the duty of education to be on its 
guard against, and to prevent. Instruction may be 
either analytic or synthetic. We must make use of both 
these means. The pupil cannot reach by analysis the 
same wealth of attainment as he can by information im- 
parted by the teacher. On the other hand, the mere 
imparting of information will not unite itself with the 
individual consciousness except in the most gifted na- 
tures, unless it be combined with the practice of analysis. 
3. Discipline is concerned with the future of the 
pupil. It rests on hope, and shows itself in patience. 
It modifies government, which might perhaps effect its 
purpose sooner with greater severity ; it modifies in- 
struction in cases where this makes too great demands 



200 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

on the powers of the individual. It requires for its 
exercise tact and natural cheerfulness. Instruction and 
discipline taken together make up education. The ob- 
ject of discipline is to strengthen the character for the 
purposes of morality. Differences of character depend 
upon differences of will. When a man looks into his 
mind he finds something already there, certain tenden- 
cies, certain signs of strength and weakness, resulting 
from his natural disposition. This is the objective part 
of the character. But by the contemplation of his 
qualities arises a new will, which by distinction from 
the other should be called the subjective part of his 
character. Objective characters differ very greatly, and 
need for their improvement both stimulus and repres- 
sion. These it is difficult to apply, and therefore the 
objective part of the character only attains with trouble 
a condition of harmony with itself. Such a harmony is 
produced by the operation of what Herbart calls will- 
memory. The subjective part of the will is gradually 
formed by the adoption of certain modes of action under 
similar circumstances ; and as this part of the will de- 
velops, a man acquires for himself certain maxims and 
principles, which give rise to motives. To make these 
motives effectual often requires a struggle, and the 
strength or weakness of a character is shown by the 
more or less complete harmony between the objective and 
the subjective will. Morality resides in both. However 
well disposed a child maybe, and however much his ob- 
jective will may be full of good tendencies, we shall not 
secure the operation of these, and the exclusion of the bad 
tendencies which are to be found in every one, unless 



FUNCTION OF DISCIPLINE, 201 

we support tliem by good principles, which belong to 
the subjective side of the will. These principles are 
produced by the aesthetic judgments, by which the child 
is led to distinguish between good and evil. Unless 
these judgments are clear, strong, and complete, the 
principles have not firm foundation in the pupil's mind, 
and are little better than words learned by rote. On 
the other hand, if the aesthetic judgments of the will are 
mter woven with the whole of the interest which springs 
from experience, intercourse with teachers, and instruc- 
tion, then a natural enthusiasm for virtue is produced, 
and this is strengthened by the logical cultivation of 
maxims and their systematic use in the course of life. 

Function of Discipline. — Discipline has three functions 
— to restrain, to determine, and to regulate. Restrain- 
ing discipline springs from that memory of the will 
which is the opposite of the levity generally attributed 
to youth. The first manifestation of restraining disci- 
pline is government, and the obedience which it produces. 
The object of determining discipline is to secure that 
the pupil shall choose, and not the teacher in his name. 
Regulating discipline begins when the subjective char- 
acter begins to show itself. It appeals to the child's 
reason, and tries to produce consistency of action. By 
these means we produce in the mind first aesthetic judg- 
ments of the will ; that is, the habit of preferring good to 
evil as a matter of taste and choice, and lastly, reasoned 
morality, which is the final stage. 

It will be seen that the truth or falsehood of Herbart's 
principles of education must stand or fall with the truth 
or falsehood of his psychology. Whatever may be his 



202 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

ultimate influence, he deserves the credit of showing 
that a right philosophy of education can only be founded 
upon a right system of psychology. 



ANALYSIS OF CHAPTER XI. 

PAGE 

The Metaphysicians 186 

Kant 187 

Further Statement 188 

Work is Necessary to Education 189 

" Know and Can " 190 

Moral Training . 190 

Methods of Teaching 192 

Knowledge of Mankind 192 

Religion 193 

Fichte 194 

Herbart 195 

What Good Teaching Does o 198 

Function of Discipline c ...... 201 



WINCHESTER. 203 



THE ENGLISH PUBLIC SCHOOL, 

No survey of educational theories, however brief, 
would be complete without some consideration of that 
form of education which is most essentially English, and 
which is regarded both by ourselves and by foreigners 
as a representation on a small scale of our national life. 
It would be impossible within these narrow limits to do 
anything more than to touch on certain aspects of the 
subject. It will be enough to show how our public 
schools came into being, what they were like at the time 
of the revival of learning, the principal changes which 
they have undergone since, and, in conclusion, to con- 
sider whether they can be accepted as the best type on 
which a comprehensive scheme of national secondary ed- 
ucation should be moulded. For this purpose no schools 
need be mentioned except the three colleges of Winches- 
ter, Eton, and Westminster. They have this in common, 
that they have all arisen under the shadow of royal pal- 
aces. 

Winchester. — William of Wykeham, in founding his 
magnificent college, was only restoring to the royal city 
of Winchester a place of education whicli had flourished 
there from time immemorial. The school was opened 
in 1393, seven years after the opening of New College at 
Oxford. The two institutions were intended to go hand 



204 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES, 

in hand together ; each was to be a check and an assist- 
ance to the other. New College students were prepared 
at Winchester, and it was the duty of the university 
foundation to notice and to demand the correction of 
any shortcomings which might be observed in the con- 
duct of the school. It is a strong testimony to the unity 
of English history and to the permanence of our institu- 
tions that these two foundations now, at the end of five 
hundred years, hold a rank second to none in their de- 
partments of instruction. 

Eton. — Eton College, with its sister. King's College at 
Cambridge, was founded about forty years later, on the 
avowed model of Winchester. As the sainted Henry 
looked from the terrace of AVindsor upon the low-lying 
meadows of the Thames valley, and upon the pilgrimage 
church of Our Lady of Eton, he determiniBd to establish 
there an institution which should give to his name a lus- 
tre which it was never likely to receive from statesman- 
ship or war. The scheme of the two colleges occupied 
the thoughts of the monarch during his whole life. He 
was only nineteen when he laid the first stone of his de- 
sign, and his full plan for its completion occupies his 
last will and testament. Eton was from the first a 
school for the governing classes, the gentry of England. 
It is said that Henry VII. was educated there. The 
Paston Letters show us the son of a Norfolk squire going 
thus far afield for his education. Not until some time 
later did Eton become, ipar excellence, the court school of 
England, but it was not, like so many schools which 
now stand in the first rank, developed from a grammar 
school, and changed, from a position of mere local use- 
fulness, to one of imperial importance. 



WESTMINSTER. 205 



Westminster. — Westminster, founded in 1541, is a 
specimen of the abbey school, changed to suit Protestant 
times. The scholars are domiciled in the old dormitory 
of the Benedictines, the dean and chapter exercise su- 
perintendence over its conduct. But by its position 
at Westminster, close to the Houses of Parliament and 
Whitehall, the school acquired an importance for which 
it was not originally designed. Queen Elizabeth prob- 
ably cared more for Eton than for Westminster, al- 
though the latter school owes her so much. Under the 
regime of Busby, and even before it, Westminster clung 
closely to the fortunes of the Stuarts. It was not till the 
reign of Anne, or perhaps till that of George I., that 
Eton began to gain upon its rival in fashion and popu- 
larity. The residence of George TIL at Windsor, and 
his great attachment to Eton, placed that school indis- 
putably in the first place, and it would now be to many 
people difficult to imagine that there was ever a time 
when its rank in the country, as compared with West- 
minster, was reversed. 

The Early Course of Study. — Winchester was founded 
in the first instance for the main purpose of teaching 
grammar, the first of the seven liberal arts, but there is 
no difficulty in reconstructing its curriculum exactly, be- 
cause we have a detailed account of the education given 
both at Eton and at AVinchester in the middle of the 
sixteenth century, after the Eeformation, and we have 
good reason to believe that the education given at West- 
minster at the same time was of a very similar character.* 

At this period the school consisted of seven forms, of 
which the first three belonged to the upper and the last 
* Maxwell Lyte, "Eton College," ch. viii. 



206 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

three to the lower school, the fourth, or centre form, 
belonging partly to one division and partly to the other. 
At Eton, in the present day, the highest form is the 
sixth — the remove, between the fifth and fourth forms, 
occupies something of the position which the old fourth 
form occupied. The fourth form is now placed under 
the jurisdiction of the lower master, whereas the third, 
second, and first forms have almost, if not entirely, 
ceased to exist. At five o^clock the boys were awakened, 
by one of the prcepostors or monitors, with the cry of 
'' Surgite ;" while dressing they chanted Latin psalms. 
Each boy had to make his own bed and to sweep the 
floor. They then went downstairs two-and-two to work. 
At Winchester there was a morning service, at Eton 
none. The usher read prayers in the long dormitory at 
six ; work went on till nine, when there was probably a 
short breakfast. At ten o^clock the boys were summoned 
for prayers. Dinner was served at eleven, and the boys 
marched to the hall and back again in double file. They 
then worked continuously from twelve to three, they 
played from three to four, had lessons from four to five, 
and then supper. From six to eight the boys worked 
under the superintendence of the monitors, having at 
seven a draught of beer and a slice of bread. At eight 
they went to bed. In the summer more time was allowed 
for recreation ; on Friday the scholars were punished 
for the faults they had committed during the week, and 
on that day and Saturday they were examined. Latin 
was almost the only subject of study. The lower boys 
had to decline and conjugate words, and the upper boys 
to repeat rules of grammar. Some Latin composition 
was done every day — themes by the lower forms, verses 



LATER PLANS. 20/ 



by the two upper. In the first form they studied Gate 
and Vives ; in the second Terence, Lucian, and ^sop, 
the last two in Latin ; in the third, Terence, ^^Esop, and 
Sturm's selections from Cicero's letters ; in the fourth, 
Terence, Ovid's ^^ Tristia," and the epigrams of Martial, 
Catullus, and Sir Thomas More ; in the fifth Ovid's 
^^ Metamorphoses,'^ Horace, Cicero's letters, Valerius 
Maximus, Lucius Elorus, and Justin ; in the sixth 
and seventh, Caesar's ^^Commentaries," Cicero *'de 
Ofi&ciis" and '^ de Amicitia," Vergil, Lucan, and at last 
the Greek grammar. It will be seen that this education 
is entirely of the humanistic type as conceived by Sturm 
of Strasburg. 

Later Plans. — Passing over two hundred years, we 
have again a complete account of the education given at 
Eton about the year 1770. As it was then it remained 
unchanged until within the memory of men now living. 
During that interval, while the education still remained 
humanistic, it had undergone considerable alteration, 
principally owing to the success and influence of the 
Jesuits. Their arrangement of the week had been 
copied. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday were whole 
school days, Tuesday a whole holiday, Thursday a half 
holiday, and Saturday a '■'■ play" at four, that is, some- 
thing between the two. One change of great importance 
had been introduced in the shortening of the school les- 
sons. The regular lessons on a whole school day were 
from eight to nine, from eleven to twelve, from three to 
four, and from five to six. Eighty years later these 
hours had dwindled down to three quarters of an hour, 
and sometimes did not exceed half an hour. The first 
school began at about seven. On whole holidays the 



208 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

boys might lie in bed till nine. They had chapel at 
eleven, and again at three. This was the regular course 
of things, but as in the case of the Jesuits it was terribly 
broken in upon. All saints' days were holidays, and the 
eves of saints' days half holidays ; to these were added 
founders' days and court days. The system of shifting 
the work which ought to have been done on one day to 
another was only an additional cause of idleness and con- 
fusion. The head master taught the sixth and fifth 
forms together — about 120 boys. In a regular week the 
boys had ten construing lessons, and seven saying les- 
sons. The authors included Homer, Lucian, Vergil, 
Scriptores Romani, a selection book of Latm prose and 
Poetae Gragci, a very elegant compilation of Greek lyric 
poetry. Nearly all the poetry construed was supposed 
to be said by heart. On Saturday and Monday morn- 
ings the sixth form and upper fifth construed part of a 
Greek play, which was nearly all the provision made in 
the school for teaching Attic Greek. 

We are told that the sixth and fifth forms were sup- 
posed to read in their leisure hours certain books of 
'' erudition," as the Jesuits would call it, for the making 
of a complete scholar. All fifth form boys wrote three 
Latin exercises a week: an original theme, a copy of 
original Latin verses, and a copy of Latin lyrics on the 
same subject. In the sixth form Greek iambics took the 
place of lyrics, but this was probably a late addition, and 
it may be doubted whether the Greek was very pure 
Attic. The books read in the other forms were the 
Odes of Horace, Pomponius Mela, Cornelius Nepos, 
Farnaby's Selection of Epigrams, Ca?sar, Terence, and 
Greek Testament. The Greek and Latin grammars 



MERITS OF THE ENGLISH SYSTEM, 20g 

were learned by heart. For tliree hours in the week the 
younger boys were taught writing and arithmetic, some 
of the fifth form geography or algebra, and those who 
stayed long enough went through parts of Euclid. No 
mention is made of history, and none of science ; com- 
petition was not carried to such an extent as in the Jes- 
uit schools. The boys were tried on passing from one form 
to another. A system of money rewards for good boys was 
in force, paid by the dames, but put down to the account 
of the parents. The system of ^^ challenges'^ obtained 
in the lower part of the school, and flogging was estab- 
lished as a recognized mode of punishment. The prae- 
postors, or sixth form, had large monitorial powers, 
which they have retained at Winchester and at Harrow, 
but have lost at Eton. 

Such were the studies of Eton in her palmiest days, 
the days of George III., when she possessed, in conjunc- 
tion with Christchurch, the undisputed privilege of 
training the statesmen and rulers of England. We see 
that it is a purely humanistic system, founded on the 
basis of Sturm, but modified and rendered milder and 
more elegant by the example of the courtly Jesuits, who 
were then the favored preceptors of the French. 

Its Merits. — The great merit of this system, with all 
its defects, was that every one believed in it. The en- 
ergy of private tutors made up for its more serious in- 
tellectual deficiencies, and the introduction, by accident 
or design, of the principles of Locke made the school 
a training ground for manliness and independence of 
character; only a few discontented critics wished for 
anything better. A clever boy began Latin at six, and 
Greek at eight; from his earliest years he was taught 



210 MDUCATION-AL THEORIES. 

that a scholar and a gentleman were synonymous terms; 
he went to a public school at nine or ten, or sometimes 
even at six: as he was examined in the classics for en_ 
trance, his father stood by with tears in his eyes. His 
Latin verses were the admiration of his school-fellows, 
his English verses were as correct and polished as his 
Latin. No one had any doubt as to the excellence of 
the product; the supply was not large, but it was suffi- 
cient. It was enough to furnish a little culture to the 
Cabinet, a little refinement to the Bar, a little learning 
to the Church, and enough scholarship to schoolmasters 
to keep up the yearly tale of Greek and Latin versifiers. 
All this is now changed. Boys often do not begin Latin 
till they are twelve, and, if we are to believe what we 
are told, learn little Greek or none at all. They go to 
a public school at the age at which, three hundred years 
ago, they used to go to the university; they stay at the 
university till they are grown men. Parents, so far 
from preparing their sons in the subjects in which the 
public schools will examine, try to redeem the time 
which they fear will be inevitably lost. They do their 
best to teach their children everything which they will 
not learn at school; they make them learn French, mu- 
sic, and history; the well-educated boy on entering school 
is placed according to his classical attainments, and is 
made to live with companions who have received neither 
the old learning nor the new. Such are the disadvan- 
tages of a state of transition. Unless we make haste to 
organize our school education on some intelligible basis, 
we shall arrive at a condition in which our Cabinet is 
not cultured, our Bar is not refined, our clergy is not 
learned, and our schoolmasters are not scholars. 



A PLAN WANTING. 211 

A Plan Wanting. — The study of the history of educa- 
tional theories will have heen of little service if it does 
not show us that any system of education to be efficient 
must be arranged on some well-understood plan, in which 
the end is kept in view from the very first. Whether 
we prefer the humanistic, the realistic, or the natural- 
istic method, whether we try to give a classical educa- 
tion, a scientific education based on mathematics, or a 
modern literary education based on modern languages, 
we shall only succeed if we direct our efforts steadily to 
the attainment of our object. At present we too often 
attempt to teach everything at once, and therefore teach 
nothing; we embrace all the subjects of a liberal educa- 
tion, and accomplish the learning of none of them. 

What is Needed. — Next to the conflict of studies, the 
most interesting question connected with our public 
schools is the type which is best suited for a national 
system of education in England. If we desire to bring 
liberal education within the reach of all classes, and to 
scatter schools all over the country, of what nature 
should these schools be? The type most in favor with 
us at the present day is that of large boarding-schools. 
But such schools are, in their present size, the growth 
of comparatively few years. The Rugby of Dr. Arnold 
scarcely rose above three hundred students; and the 
local grammar schools, in which so many great men 
have been educated, must always have been small in 
numbers. How far, then, is it possible at large board- 
ing-schools to carry out any of those precepts which the 
history of education presents to us as desirable? The 
one essential condition to the acquisition of wider knowl- 
edge is a desire of learning in the pupil. The chief de- 



212 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES, 

feet in all schemes of quick and easy education is that 
they presuppose no resistance on the part of the learner, 
whereas every schoolmaster knows that more than half 
his time and skill is taken up with overcoming that re- 
sistance. In the old days of public schools there was 
much idleness, boys were left much to themselves, but 
those who read at all were accustomed to read in a lit- 
erary spirit. Some corner of the library, some favorite 
shelf of books, perhaps the peculiar care of some excep- 
tional tutor, sowed in the mind of an able boy the first 
seeds of wide and commanding learning. There are 
many traces in old letters and diaries and school papers 
of the existence of this real love of solid knowledge. 
The "Microcosm^' of Canning, the ^'^ Etonian" of 
Praed, the ^^ Rngby Magazine" of Clough, are evidences 
of the existence of a literary spirit. Boys took a lively 
interest in each other's compositions, whether in living 
or dead languages. A good copy of Latin verses would 
be passed from hand to hand, and copied into a book. 
Several extract books of this kind are extant, dating 
from the latter part of the last century. The excellence 
which is now too often valued only as a means of obtain- 
ing marks and scholarships was then estimated at its 
own intrinsic worth. It is a question whether this has 
not to some extent passed away. School magazines are 
devoted to school news, and rarely contain compositions 
fitted for a place in permanent literature. It is com- 
plained that boys seldom read for their own amusement, 
and are still less often in the habit of discussing points of 
literary criticism and style. Debating societies abound 
at public schools, but it may be doubted if the discus- 
sions in them, although carried on with readiness and 



EM PL YMENT. 2 1 3 



fluency, exhibit any of the higher qualities of literary 
excellence. 

Employment. — Nor can it be wondered at if this is the 
case. The chief aim of the head master of a large 
boarding-school is to keep his pupils constantly em- 
ployed. He has come to the conclusion that the only 
remedy for the evils which result from mixing so many 
students together is that they should have as little time 
as possible to themselves. Some head masters have 
kept cards arranged in pigeon-holes on which is written 
what every boy in the school ought to be doing in every 
one of his waking hours, both in work and play. This 
is little better than the French system of extreme sur- 
veillance. Under this system a boy has no leisure for 
thought; work under the constant stimulus of compe- 
tition, play organized with an elaborate scale of grad- 
uated prizes, school business and school discipline occu- 
py the whole of his busy life, so that a lad of nineteen 
at the head of a great school, if he be conscientious and 
energetic, is as hard-worked as a man of thirty. The 
common enemy of boys and masters is the lounger or 
the ''loafer" who wanders about doing nothing, whose 
feeble interest in the affairs of life is never fanned into 
an effective flame, who grows up to be a burden to him- 
self and others. But we must not confound him with 
the serious, though perhaps eccentric student who shuns 
the paths of men, and delights in the river side, and the 
slope of the grassy bank, and the shade of protecting 
elms. In their efforts to get rid of the lounger, school- 
masters are in danger of throwing out the child with the 
bath, and of tearing up wheat and tares together with 
the same impetuous grasp. What are the results of a 



214 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

training of this kind? A healthy mind in a healthy 
body. But the healthy body is too often fitted only to 
exist in the open air, and will break down under the 
strain of a sedentary profession, while the healthy mind 
has no furniture but a complex of prejudices which 
passes under the name of common-sense. 

Defects in the English Scholar. — Examples are not 
wanting in the senate and elsewhere of public school and 
university men whose laborious lives have been the ap- 
propriate sequel of a more laborious youth. But our 
modern public school boy too often knows no such ex- 
perience. His path of virtuous progress is marked out 
with fences and sign-posts, the road is macadamized 
with guides and extract books, and made smooth and 
easy by marks and examinations. Nothing is left to his 
own enterprise and ingenuity; he can always tell exactly 
where he is, and is sure to receive at the end of the 
measured mile the applause of his approving backers. 
He knows how to get uf anything. He is convinced 
that the whole duty of life is to be doing something — 
that is, to be going in for some competition. To sit m 
an easy chair and read a book is laziness in his eyes. His 
conversation and his thoughts are almost entirely about 
games. There is, doubtless, much to admire in this 
purely English product; he is far superior in manliness 
and vigor to a Frenchman or an Italian. But as he ad- 
vances in life, and leaves his boyhood behind him, the 
gifts which he has stored up for himself become of less 
value. At the university, with all his hard work, he 
cannot contend against those who have worshipped 
knowledge with a more jealous love. He misses the 
broad and convenient highway, with its symmetrical 



VIEWS OF MAURICE. 215 

milestones and its regular relays of official plaudits. He 
has to make his way either across country where he 
must choose his own line over banks and fences, or, still 
worse, through a primeval forest of unregulated study, 
not yet subdued and made accessible for the passage of 
man. The most valuable part of university training, the 
clash of mind upon mind, is closed to him, because his 
studies do not represent ideas to his intelligence, and he 
has never been accustomed to regard the things he has 
had to learn except as a wholesome exercise, to be varied 
with other exercises of a different kind. The tripos and 
the schools awaken his ardor, but he soon finds that 
even in them something more than mechanical plodding 
is necessary for success. In the world he is not likely to 
make much of a figure unless chance g ves him scope 
for active enterprise. 

Views of Maurice. — If this is a fair picture of the 
public boarding-school system, can we regard it as satis- 
factory ? It may be answered that although the few may 
lose something, the many have been gainers, that our 
public schools have been entirely reformed, that the 
idleness and dissipation common thirty or forty years 
ago exist no longer. But in all questions of the higher 
education we must consider not the many but the fcAv; 
we must test our system by seeing whether it is really 
capable of producing work of first-rate excellence. In 
the words of Mr. F. D. Maurice, **'^A11 experience is 
against the notion that the means to produce a supply 
of good ordinary men is to attempt nothing higher. 
I know that nine tenths of those whom the university 

* Quoted by J. S. Mill in his article on "Civilization," from 
the novel of " Eustace Conway." 



2l6 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

sends out must be liewers of wood and drawers of water, 
but if I train the ten tenths to be so, depend upon it 
the wood will be badly cut and the water will be spilt. 
Aim at something noble, make your system such that a 
great man may be formed by it, and there will be a man- 
hood in your little men of which you do not dream. " 

Day Schools. — Has not therefore the time arrived for 
inquiring carefully whether our present system of large 
boarding-schools is the most desirable, and whether we 
are not in danger of losing m the next generation some 
of our most valuable elements of culture unless we adopt 
an organization which preserves and guards the simple 
love of work and of acquisition of knowledge which is 
the natural condition for a healthy child? The best 
means of effecting this is by day-schools, and no gi*eat 
impulse will be given to the secondary education of 
England unless a net-work of day-schools is drawn over 
the country. Day-schools have many advantages over 
their rivals. They are far cheaper, because the boys 
board and lodge at home, and the masters are willing to 
work for a smaller remuneration because they have so 
much leisure time on their hands. Some of the most 
difficult questions of discipline do not arise in them, and 
the pursuance of their educational objects is undisturbed 
by any conflicting currents. The home life is not lost, 
and the child is allowed to grow up in the bosom, of his 
family. Great indeed is the responsibility thrown upon 
the home, and if that is bad the master's work is un- 
done, but if it be good and studious it forms his most 
valuable auxiliary. Much of the industry and learning 
of Scotland is attributable to this cause. The boy on 
his return home rehearses to his parents what he has 



THE INFLUENCE OF DAY SCHOOLS. 217 



learned from his master, and a keen interest is felt in 
the place which he holds in his class. If our experience 
of English homes is different, it is because we have not 
learned the habit of superintendence, and because we 
are too ready to throw off responsibility when our chil- 
dren go to school, and to think that their education is a 
matter which no longer concerns us. 

Their Influence on the Home. — In countries where a 
system of day-schools is understood, children become a 
source of education to their parents; they either lead 
them over the paths which they themselves have trodden 
in earlier years, or introduce them to new fields of cul- 
ture, which might have remained forever closed to them. 
It may be urged that this is only possible in a simple 
state of society, and that in times of greater wealth and 
more complex civilization the home is not fitted to take 
its part in the work ; the children of a successful bar- 
rister, of a hard-worked member of Parliament or man 
of business, cannot receive their father^s care, and in 
many cases had better be at a boarding-school. If this 
be true, the school should be as like a home as possible 
in its essential particulars, offering indeed a wider ex- 
perience and opportunities for a fuller play of character, 
but never losing the simplicity and industry which are 
apt to disappear in large institutions. It may be true 
that the most distinguished men in England, both in the 
universities and in the world, have been educated at 
large boarding-schools; but the experiment of day- 
schools has never been fairly tried. If the flower of 
English youth go habitually to boarding-schools, it is 
not strange that the most successful Euglishmen come 
from these establishments. Of this we may be certain. 



21 8 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

that the greatness of a country is dependent upon her 
schools more than anything else, and that, unfortu- 
nately, not in the present generation, but in the next. 
AVhat lot are we preparing for our children? We are 
extending education to the masses, we examine more 
than we ever did before, we scarcely leave a corner for 
the dunce or the sluggard to creep into. Bat all this is 
of little worth unless the highest culture of the nation is 
maintained at its proper level. The lijcees of France 
send out every year masses of students modelled to order 
and prepared to pattern, but whatever academical en- 
lightenment France can boast of during the last fifty 
years she owes to one institution of about a hundred 
students, the Ecole Normale. Is it desirable, in the in- 
terests of the future of our country, that we should con- 
tinue to increase our large public boarding-schools, in 
which it is difficult to secure that literary interest should 
ever be paramount, or should we rather look to an or- 
ganized system of day-schools drawn over the country, 
in which the home influence will not have lost its force, 
supplemented in exceptional cases by boarding-schools 
of the size of Milton's ideal academy, large enough to 
embrace all varieties of life and character, but not large 
enough to destroy, what must be the vital principle of 
every successful school, a real and living enthusiasm for 
literature and learning? 



ANALYSIS. 219 



ANALYSIS OF CHAPTER XII. 

PAGE 

Winchester 203 

Eton 304 

Westminster 305 

The Early Hours of Study 305 

Later Places 307 

Its Merits 209 

A Plan Wanting 311 

What is Needed 311 

Employment 313 

Defects in the English Scholar 314 

Views of Maurice 315 

Day Schools 316 

Their Influence on the Home 317 



APPENDIX, 



FROEBEL. 

His Early Life. — Friedricli Froebel was born April 
21, 1782, in the village of Oberweisbach in Thuringia. 
His mother died when he was so young that he never 
remembered her; his father was a laborious pastor, and 
gave him little attention. His great amusement at one 
time in his childhood was to watch some workmen from 
a window as they were repairing the church; and he 
long remembered the impulse he had to use what pieces 
of furniture or other objects he could move, to imitate 
them in their building. In after years he determined 
that the building instinct should be provided for; and 
he devised materials among children's playthings to be 
used for construction purposes. 

The lad was left much to himself: not until he was 
ten years old was he sent to school. Having wandered 
much in the fields alone, he was a thoughtful, dreamy 
child, and his teacher, a man of the old stamp, pro- 
nounced him an idler; the formal lessons of the school 
were plainly very distasteful. His inborn power to edu- 
cate was all of this time exercised upon himself; it 



FROEBEL BEGINS TO TEACH. 221 

created an ideal, but the lack of harmony between that 
and real life was a constant source of pain. Finding 
perfect content in nature he entreated that he might be 
a farmer, so he was apprenticed for three years to a for- 
ester. But he was taught nothing practically: he merely 
read books on mathematics and natural history. Even 
at this early period he seems to have concluded that 
knowledge of any kind should never be a mere instru- 
ment to use for gaining a livelihood, but be the means of 
rounding the character, of obtaining the highest self- 
culture. 

Begins to Teach. — When eighteen years of age, he at- 
tempted to attend lectures at the University of Jena, 
but he gained little; his speculative tendencies followed 
him: to find unity in diversity, to relate the parts to the 
whole, instead of mastering his lessons, occupied his 
time. His stay was short for want of means. Then he 
tried various occupations and visited various places. 
While in Frankfort he formed the acquaintance of 
Gruner, the director of the normal school, and this man, 
the first to penetrate his character, proposed that he be- 
come a teacher, and furnished him a post at once. He 
tells us that when he found himself before a class he 
immediately felt that he was in his proper element; he 
felt as a bird feels in the air, or a fish in the water. 
Here he seems to have realized somewhat the possibility 
of working for that ideal that had gradually become a 
conscious purpose of his life — the ennobling of hu- 
manity. 

Visits Pestalozzi. — Hearing and reading much of 
Pestalozzi, he visited him at Yverdun in Switzerland, 
and saw the practical working of ideas that had more or 



222 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

less taken spontaneous possession of his own mind. This 
visit was an era in his life. On his return to Frankfort 
his teaching attracted marked attention : it was now 
plainly a serious effort to draw out the faculties of the 
pupils. 

Then succeeded what would seem to be a series of 
educational experiments under varied circumstances : 
at one time spending three years with Pestalozzi, then 
at the university adding to his slender stock of knowl- 
edge, until in 1815 he established a school. This was 
brought about rather suddenly by the death of his 
brother: the education of the children thus left, and 
those of another brother, he felt devolved upon him, 
and was begun in a pleasant house in Griesheim, and 
later continued in Keilhan. 

Opens a School. — Old friends joined him as helpers. 
First Middendorf, then Langethal, and then Barop. 

Froebel, with these devoted friends, attempted to 
build up an institution that should vivify the whole 
German nation : but he was a man without practical 
ability; so that although the school was successful in an 
educational point of view it never prospered materially. 
His experiments were numerous. Much teaching was 
given in the fields; love for natural history and physical 
science was inspired; the first knowledge to put within 
the child's reach was that of things, of animals, of him- 
self, of the earth. 

His Ideas. — Besides, he recognized practical activity 
as an integral part of the educative effort. He saw a 
parallel in the mental growth of the child, with the de- 
velopment of all other organisms in nature. Manual 
work was, however, recognized only for the sake of mak- 



FROEBEL FOUNDS THE KINDERGARTEN. 223 

ing a more complete human being. Life, action, and 
knowledge were to liim three notes of one harmonious 
chord. That only was real education that assisted nat- 
ural growth, that placed the right mental food within 
the grasp of the young being, and aided the effort to 
grasp it. 

He discovered that children must come together in 
numbers, so as to present a miniature of the larger life 
they were preparing for; in fact, that they really educate 
each other. He discovered that play was the natural 
way in which a child educated himself ; he recognized 
it as the constituted means for unfolding the child^s 
powers; that thus he learned to use his limbs; thus he 
was enabled to know the external world, the qualities of 
objects; thus taught to recognize moral relations; that 
thus he learned to contrive and adapt means to ends; 
that the spontaneity of play is a great mainspring, and 
must not be deadened; that the processes of education 
must be founded on the principles that underlie play ; 
that a just method should be so founded and he set him- 
self to the task of discovering the underlying principles 
and arranging them into a system. 

Founds the Kindergarten. — After many years of ex- 
perimental work he felt the need of a new term, and in 
1840 gave the name hindergarten to this form of edu- 
cation, protesting against the name school. There was 
no reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar, or geography. 
It was attempted simply to develop the natural energies, 
the energy of the senses, the limbs, the mind, and the 
heart. 

It must be admitted that a great chasm lies between 
the methods of Froebel and those employed in the usual 



224 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

school for young children. His was the discovery that 
the teacher could avail himself of the spontaneous ac- 
tivities of children as a means of education, and with 
that to build the sj:ructure of their physical, intellectual, 
and moral life. His, again, was the genius to conceive 
of means to employ these spontaneous activities, and to 
devise a series of objects and exercises that enable the 
child to educate himself in accordance with the plan of 
the Creator. 

Froebel wrote much to unfold his ideas and plans, but 
his style is very obscure. His great work is '^ On the 
Education of Man." Others have assisted to expound 
the ground principles, and they have taken deep root in 
Germany, England, and the United States. The kinder- 
garten has been a part of the public school system of 
St. Louis for many years, and has lately been made part 
of the school system of Boston. It has produced a re- 
markable influence already on all primary teaching, 
and it is destined to produce still deeper effects when it 
is comprehended. To know the kindergarten requires 
the closest study of childhood. 



ANALVSIB. 225 



ANALYSIS of CHAPTER XIII. 

PAGE 

Froebel- His Early Life 320 

Begins to Teach 321 

Visits Pestalozzi 321 

Opens a Scliool 322 

His Ideas 232 

Founds the Kindergarten 233 



226 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 



THE AMERICAN COMMON SCHOOL 

The common school of to-day is the product of many- 
forces. It is not a hap-hazard formation; it is not com- 
posed of driftwood ; nor is it an accretion. It is the 
product of forces whose object is the advancement of 
man's development and progress. The original crude 
conception has been recast, remodelled, and expanded 
as the ideas of the great educators have been compre- 
hended. 

To understand clearly the American common school, 
the Southern States must be omitted ; in them, before 
the Civil War, public education existed but in the merest 
outline, except in a few of the larger cities. At the 
present time, appearances indicate that the typical school 
has begun to obtain a permanent foothold in these States. 

The schools of Canada are planned on the English 
pattern, but she is so closely allied to us by railway, 
postal, social, and political ties, that they have already 
experienced a marked change, and it is only a question 
of time when they will assume the American type. 

The American common school exhibits its typical fea- 
tures in the belt of States that form the Northern and 
Western part of the United States. The original start- 
ing point was in New England. The early settlers here 
were well-to-do, intelligent, aiul deeply religious, and 



THE ORIGINAL CONCEPTION. 22-J 

they were impressed with the importance of providing 
for the instruction and education of their children. 
They founded schools to impart the rudiments of knowl- 
edge, — reading, writing, spelling, and computation. A 
few of the teachers were drawn from the colleges and 
academies, but the larger part were the sons of farmei's 
who had by self-instruction added to what the common 
school had given them. The men who managed the 
school affairs were elected annually by the citizens com- 
posing the school community ; they selected the teacher, 
and fixed the rate of wages. The studies pursued were 
for a long time a matter of custom. 

The Original Conception. — The object attempted, in 
general, was merely an acquaintance with a few rudi- 
ments of knowledge. In educated communities it was 
felt that something more than this should result from 
the intercourse of teacher and pupil; the term ^'^ char- 
acter*^ was often used, but almost wholly as synony- 
mous with reputation; as the pupils were urged to have 
a ^'^good character,^' it is plain that the term had a nar- 
row moral significance, and not an educational one. 

A hard, fixed, and mechanical routinism was a 
marked feature ; the power to keep order was consid- 
ered the prime qualification in a teacher. There was 
usually a painful antagonism between teacher and pupil ; 
it was, in fact, thought to be quite natural for the pupil 
to endeavor to thwart the teacher's efforts. The aim 
was to load the memory ; the most successful in doing 
this were deemed skilful teachers. There was no pre- 
tence of employing educational principles ; the teacher 
merely undertook to impart the modicum of knowledge 
he possessed. The memorizing of the statements in a 



228 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

book was considered to be the chief end of going to 
school. The parents could feel and did feel but little 
interest in a work that had neither a moral, intellectual, 
nor scientific basis ; the buildings used portrayed the 
estimation in which the school was held ; they were 
unattractive, and often repulsive. 

The Effect of Pestalozzi's Discoveries. — As the nine- 
teenth century came in, there were no appearances in 
the skies to indicate that a better day for the school was 
soon to dawn. Yet two years before the century opened 
an experiment was begun at Stanz, in Switzerland, and 
coming to a rude ending there, was afterward continued 
in Burgdorf and Yverdun, which was to produce a 
mighty effect on the whole educational world, and no 
part of it was to be so profoundly affected as America. 
Pestalozzi's school at Yverdun was visited not only by 
nobles and kings, but by thoughtful philanthropists ; it 
was closed in 1825 ; but its influence was never to cease. 
The German teachers began at once to employ its 
methods. Dr. Mayo carried the ideas of Pestalozzi to 
England, and to disseminate them founded the cele- 
brated training school for teachers in Gray's Inn Road, 
near London. 

The Effect on America. — The discoveries of Pestalozzi 
were brought to America — the best soil in the world for 
them : no governmental authority had fixed the method 
of teaching ; the teacher was free to employ the best. 
The power that lay in the new ideas was seen, and dis- 
cusssion immediately arose. The two Alcotts, Samuel 
J. May, William 0. Woodbridge, Warren Colburn, Wil- 
liam Russell, Charles Brooks, James 0. Carter, Cyrus 



HORACE MANN. 22g 



Pierce, Lowell Mason, and Horace Mann, went forth as 
apostles of the new faith. The latter was elected secre- 
tary of the Massachusetts Board of Education in 1837^ 
and immediately began to labor for a wide-sweeping 
reform. 

Horace Mann. — To understand the views of Pestalozzi 
more clearly, Mr. Mann visited Europe; and his praise of 
the schools that had caught the spirit of the great Swiss 
teacher drew the sharpest criticisms.* The space that 
lay between the schools as they were and as he saw they 
might be, aroused all his ardor; he became an inspired 
educational reformer of the highest type. He discussed 
the subject of education from a high standpoint ; he 
pointed out defects, not only, but suggested remedies. 
His lectures in every part of the State aroused public 
opinion ; so that the new leaven of Pestalozzian ideas 
found a lodgment, and produced a remarkable change. 
Normal schools were opened, graded schools were formed, 
teachers' institutes were held, and general meetings to 
discuss education were largely attended. To no one is 
America so much indebted for the advancements made 
in common-school education as to Horace Maun. 
Through his almost superhuman labors the methods of 
teachmg became Pestalozzian to the degree in which the 
teacher could be made to comprehend underlying prin- 
ciples. 

The Change Effected. — Instead of the memorizing of 
words, the pupil was directed to things; he was encour- 

* Thirty-oue Boston schoolmasters united in publishing a pam- 
phlet to show that the old routinism was better than the philo- 
sophic methods recommended by Mr. Mann. 



230 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

aged to use his perceptive powers; he was treated as a 
thinking, reasoning being, with educative powers slum- 
bering within him. The teacher now made it a rule to 
begin the education of his pupils by presenting concrete 
things, and not abstractions and generalizations, such as 
definitions, rules, and propositions; to begin with the near, 
the actual, the real, in order to give personal experience 
and power to proceed to and interpret the unknown. 

Froebel's Influence. — The eifects produced by the im- 
pact of the Pestalozzian wave on the shores of America 
had been only partially comprehended and employed 
before the ideas of Froebel, who had been a pupil of 
Pestalozzi, challenged attention. At first there was 
doubt and hesitancy. As before, the first response was, 
'^ there can be no advance upon what we already have.'' 
Miss Elizabeth Peabody was, however, untiring in her 
efforts to disseminate the ideas of Froebel, and several 
kindergartens were established; discussion followed, and 
at length it was admitted that this disciple of Pestalozzi 
had evolved and had arrived at the thought of true de- 
velopment and the condition of true culture. The in- 
fluence of the kindergarten has widened and deepened- 
every year, until it is apparent that the American schools 
will be built upon it as a substructure. 

Influence on Teaching. — The great discovery of Froe- 
bel, of means to employ the spontaneous activities of chil- 
dren, has given a cast to all primary-school exercises. 
Joy, life, liberty, inventiveness, and spontaneousness 
are becoming features of the primary school. It is seen 
that play is the device by which the Creator educates 
children, and the teacher who does not imitate His way 
cannot be successful. It is seen that doing^ self-doing, 



THE SCHOOL OF TO-DAY, 23 1 

by the pupil yields happiness and growth; and the 
teacher who does not give employment to its construc- 
tive and expressive powers is not working in accordance 
with the great foundation laws upon which the child is 
organized. 

The School of To-day. — The American school is no 
longer the crude institution it was a half-century ago. 
American educators have generally left the narrow plat- 
form on which they once stood: in theory they aim at 
character rather than knowledge; in theory, at least, 
they make their main effort to develop and strengthen 
the mental powers. As to the knowledge best fitted to 
accomplish this, it is coming to be believed that is best 
that has the most intimate relation to life — ourselves, 
mankind, the earth, the objects before and around us, 
and our Maker. The dissemination of the ideas of 
Pestalozzi and Froebel has produced a type of teaching 
so widely different from that pursued under -the old 
routinism, that a ^^new education^'' has really sprung 
up. The teacher who would teach in the light these 
men have shed upon the earth must be a philosopher 
as well as a student. The old education was mechani- 
cal; the new is psych plogical; principles on which a phil- 
osophical practice may be based are at last sought for. 

The above sketch is drawn, it is true, in large lines. 
There are thousands of teachers yet whose schools are 
mere knowledge-mills, and that of the poorest kind. 
There are thousands that do not aim at character, being 
wholly ignorant of any mode by which that can be 
evolved. There are thousands who do not know a single 
educative principle. There are thousands who are copy- 
ing the methods of Pestalozzi^ but have not imbibed his 



232 EDUCATIONAL THEORIES. 

spirit. But yet there is visible in the structure of the 
American school, rough as it is, evidences that a build- 
ing of spacious dimensions is in process of erection. 



ANALYSIS OF CHAPTER XIII. 

PAGE 

The Original Conception 237 

The Effect of Pestalozzi's Discoveries 228 

The Effect on America 228 

Horace Maun 229 

The Change Effected 229 

Froehel's Influence 230 

Influence on Teaching 230 

The School of To-day 231 



INDEX. 



A NALYSIS, why needful, 199 
-^ its importance, 199 
Aristotle and Plato, differences, 21 

plan of education, 22 
Arnauld a great teacher, 149 

a great writer, 150 
Ascham, his method, 102 

merely a school-master, 103 
Athletics among Greeks, 13 
Authority to be based on reason, 
66 

T> AGON'S mission, 62 
-*-' substituted induction for de- 
duction, 62 
reformed education, 62 
Belly the teacher, 10 
Brethren of the Common Life, their 
teaching, 51 

pAUTION in educational study, 7 
^ Cato quoted, 30 
Castle education, 50 
Character most important, 194 

formed by acting by rule, 191 
Charles the Great, educational plan 
of, 45 

his example, 49 
Child is born with faculties, 8 

has heredity to aid and to com- 
bat, 8 

to study things, 159 

not to be forced, 74 

to be taught from objects, 75 
Christian education : its features, 

44 
Cliurch and education, 46 



Chivalry: its education, 50 
Cicero on education, 31 
Comenius, his class methods, 75 

his kinds of schools, 76 

the reform he instituted, 76 

of his system, 70 

how education can aid, 72 

his idea of a school, 73 

rules of education, 73 

his work, 67 

effect on Milton, 67 

his ideas, 69 

follows nature, 70 

on education, 67 

a great discoverer, 78 
Compulsion makes studies hateful, 

66 
Conception of school in America, 

221 
Constantinople, effect of its cap- 
ture, 52 
Concrete, the teaching of, 224 
Corporal punishment, 75 

Ratich's views, 66 

opposed, 75 

at Eton, 101 

Locke opposes, 127 
Culture, why necessary, 218 

■n AY-SCHOOLS vs. boarding- 
-^ schools, 216 
Deventer, the influence of, 51 
Discipline, effect of harsh, 49 

of school men, 48 

concerned with what ? 199 

requires tact, 200 

has three functions, 201 



234 



INDEX. 



Disobedience its own avenger, 155 i 
Doing yields happiness, 225 
necessity to child, 156 

■pDUCATION a favorite problem, 

according to Plato, 17 

an experimental science, 188 

Comenius' views of, 70, 71 

changed by Christianity, 44 

depends on three things, 154 

Erasmus' views, 54 

effect on, by schoolmen, 49 

founded on psychology, 197, 202 

Greeks first to study it, 10 

how it aids, 72 

how carried on, 74 

its head in fifteenth century, 51 

loss to, by death of Charles the 
Great, 49 

extensive or intensive, 161 

mechanical or scientific, 188, 195, 
202 

(new) needed by each age, 10 

order of, 22 

experiments needed in, 187 

of the world, 9 

of courtier, 53 

of knight, 50 

Sturm's views of, 58 

to make a man, not citizen, 154 

to nurture individuality, 195 
Educator to observe nature, 159 
EcUicative power is what, 181 
"Emile," its influence, 152 

effect in Europe, 152 

read by Kant, 152 

described, 154 

to know nothing by halves, 164 
Employment of pupils, 213 

need of, 197 
Environment, its effect on children, 
196 

struggle with, 9 
Energy, breadth, unity, 198 

their relation, 198 
Erasmus, his place in education, 53 

his plans, 54 
Eton course of study, 206 

trained for manliness, 209 
Eudemon a type of a better educa- 
tion, 84 



"PATHERS, the views of, 44 

-^ would not use heathen writings,45 

Feltre, Vittorina da, 53 

Fichte, influence on German system 

of schools, 195 
Finds (child) out things for himself, 

161 
Forefathers have their hands on us,8 
Froebel, his influence in America, 
224 

agrees with Rousseau, 162 

follows Pestalozzi, 184 

agrees with Kant, 189 

his great discovery, 224 

impulse lor building, 220 

how looked at knowledge, 221 

how felt when teaching, 221 

visited Pestalozzi, 221 

drew out faculty, 222 

loved nature, 229 

as to manual work, 222 

saw need of numbers of pupils, 
223 

discovered use of play, 223 

used term Kindergarten, 233 

his special genius, 234 

n ARGANTUA, a picture of bad 
^^ education, 81 
Girls should be educated, 54 
Greek methods, 12 

education effective, 24 

main subjects, 11 

object, 25 
Greeks, the seven arts, 11 

their system still influential, 10 

and Roman ideals, 26 
Groote, founder of school at Deven- 
ter, 51 

HEALTHY mind, etc., 214 
body, etc., 214 
Herbart, founder of scientific peda- 
gogics, 195 
based education properly, 195 
Herzogenbusch school, 51 
Home influence, value of, 217 

supplemented, 218 
Horace as to pupils in Rome, 28 
Humanists, their defects, 61 
taught words and not things, 61 
wrongly taught language, 61 
the, studied words, 61 



INDEX. 



235 



Human powers limited, 8 

TMMEDIATE ends aimed at by 

-^ savages, 10 

Instruction needs unity, 198 

may be analytic or synthetic, 199 

vs. "discipline, 198 

its end, 198 

how carried out, 198 
Interest of six kinds, 199 

may be empiric, 199 

may be speculative, 199 

may be £esthetic, 199 

may be sympathetic, 199 

may be social, 199 

may be religious, 199 
Inward freedom, 196 

TANSENISTS, the, theii- methods, 
^ 145 

opposed emulation, 148 

had small classes, 148 

made study agreeable, 146 

methods of, 148 

put Greek before Latin, 148 
Jesuits, educational results valued, 
135 

their colleges, 137 

the course of study, 138 

daily work in school, 140 

why successful, 142 

why defective, 143 

retain defective methods, 144 

TT- ANT'S ideas, 187 

^^ resembles Pestalozzi, 189 

recommends work, 189 
Kindergarten, its influence deepen- 
ing, 224 

a form of Pestalozzianism, 184 
Know and can to be joined, 190 
Known to unknown, 224 

T EARN (not) by heart, 66 

-*-^ to measure, number, weigh, 

and compare, 160 
Locke, sound common-sense of, 130 
opposed to Latin verses, 132 
to memorizing Latin and Greek, 

132 
and Herbert Spencer, 128 
on physical training, 129 



Locke, neglected science, 133 
his thoughts on education, 118 
prefers private school, 119 
describes a tutor, 120 
his method, 123 
recommends kindness, 127 
would be practical, 127 

Literator, grammaticus and rhetor, 
29 

Luther, his ideas on education, 56 

Lycees of France, 218 

Lying to be met with contempt, 191 

1VTAURICE quoted, 215 

-^'•^ Mann, Horace, his work, 223 

his study of Pestalozzi, 223 
Mayo, Dr., his work, 222 
Manual trade to be taught, 156 
Marks, aiming at, effect of, 212 

in school, 214 
Melanchthon, his strong point, 56 

his lectures, 57 
Milton on music, 114 

on practical knowledge, 112 

on languages. 111 

his ideas, 104 

on things and words, 105 

describes a school, 107 

course of study, 108 
Montaigne, the understanding and 
not memory, 94 

recommends exercise, 94 

recommends training in manners, 
95 

recommends history, 95 

opposes corporal punishment, 97 

his methods, 96 

essay on education, 91 

opposed to pedantry, 92 

object of education, 92 

idea of a teacher, 93 
Morality taught, 111 

distinguished from discipline, 201 
Mother, influence of, in Rome, 37 
Mothers, school of, 77 
Mora, survival of what ? 28 
Mind upon mind, 215 
Music among the Greeks, 14 

■VTATURE to be followed, 65, 157 

-"-^ Naturalists, the, SO 
why called, 81 



236 



INDEX. 



Newman, Dr., quoted, 46 
Nettleship quoted, 21 
New education, the, 225 
Nicole, views on education, 145 
Not by heart, but by experience, 160 
Numbers taught by Greeks, 13 

C)DYSSEY, the, its charms, 12 
^^ in education, 12 
One thing at a time, 65 
Origen at Alexandria, 44 

pESTALOZZI acquired perfect 

-*- knowledge of children, 176 
recognized power of observation, 

177 
greatest service, 177 
influence on America, 222 
influence on England, 222 
influence enormous, 184 
second book, 173 
aimed at motliers, 174 
combined learning with hand 

work, 175 
failed in farming, 172 
in a school, lived like beggar, 172 
insisted on things as opposed to 

words, 173 
a mother's child, 170 
ignorant of real life, 170 
complains of his teacher, 171 
affected by Rousseau, 171 
described by Ramshauer, 178 
taught number, form, and speech, 

182 
a high place among educators, 183 
set children to teach children, 176 
lived with his pupils, 176 
aimed to simplify teaching, 176 

Pestalozzian methods in America, 
222 

Pedagogue defined, 11 
in Rome, 27 

Ponocrates, his method, 85 

Plato's plan of education, 17 
quoted on music, 16 
quoted on athletics, 19 
on dialectics, 20 

Play means what ? 224 

Port Royal schools had great repu- 
tation, 144 
lasted fifty years, 145 



Port Royal Schools, discipline kind, 
150 
best in France, 151 
Plan in education needed, 211 
Principles, good, how produced? 201 

of Herbart's education, 201 
Peabody, Miss Elizabeth, her ef- 
forts, 224 
Psychology, relation to education, 
185 
its importance, 196 
necessary to educator, 196 
Punishment, its bad effects, 190 

Rabelais opposed to, 88 
Pupil's teachableness fundamental, 
196 
to ask questions, 192 
Pubhc schools of Charles the Great, 
45 

QUINTILIAN on corporal punish- 
ment, 39 

on oratory, 42 

idea of a teacher, 39 

as to large classes, 39 

as to teacher, 39 

as to punishment, 39 

as to orator, 42 

as to teacher of young children, 
35 

public schools, 36 

quoted, 38 

ideas of, 33 
Quadrivium and trivium, 47 
Questions indicate what, 196 

RATICH, forerunner of Comenius, 
63 

his ideas, 64 

his plan with language, 65 
Rabelais' chief points, 88 

teaching through senses, 88 

trains for practical life, 88 

employs gentle treatment, 88 

his advice, 89 

his course of study, 90 

quoted, 88 

on education of his time, 81 
Reading as taught by Greeks, 12 

in Roman schools, 28 
Renaissance in education, 52 
Repetition necessary, 65 



INDEX. 



237 



Routinism, 221 

Rousseau a weak and selfish man, 
153 

not wholly original, 153 

astride the field, 153 

affects all after him, 153 

on books, 161 

on studies, 162 

recommends labor, 163 

recommends a trade, 164 
Roman education, effect on France 

and England, 26 
Rule to precede example, 192 

OEVEN free arts, 50 

^ Schoolmen, age of, 45 

their points, 45 

their method, 46 

prepared for the Reformation, 49 

method of, 46 

harsh, 48 
School friendships, 38 
Schools now on Sturm's model, 59 

boarding-school, etc., 211 

American common, 220 
Scholar and gentleman synony- 
mous, 210 
Sophists, 12 
Sturm described, 57 

his school described, 58 

his nine aphorisms, 65 

his system, 55 

rPEACHER, what he should be, 93 
•*- must not fight against nature, 
41 
must impart hope, 40 



Teacher must have moral character, 
40 

dry, is bad, 40 

a philosopher, 225 
Teaching, how made effective, 198 

demands apperception, 199 

becoming psychological, 225 

type changed, 225 
Thing first, then rule, 66 
Tutor described, 120 
Trivium, what ? 47 



U 



NITY of human powers, 181 
Uneducated not virtuous, 198 



XTITAL principle of school, 218 
* Visits to trades, etc., 87 

TyiLL, effect on character, 200 
^ ^ new, how formed, 200 

objective, 200 

subjective, 200 

the, rooted in intellect, 197 
Will-memory, what ? 200 
Work in school oppressive, 213 

conduces to outside end, 189 
Words not to exceed ideas, 158 
Writing in Roman schools, 28 
Winchester founded to teach gram- 
mar, 205 

course of study, 206 

Y VERDUN, a place of pilgrim- 
age, 181 
visited by educators, 182 

y WOLLE, the school there, 51 



Books for Teachers. 



1NDU5TRIAL. 
EDUCATION- 



Loves Industrial Education, 

Industrial Education ; a guide to Manual Training. By 
Samuel G. Love, principal of the Jamestown, (N. Y.) 
public schools. Cloth, 12mo, 330 pp. with 40 full-page 
plates containing nearly 400 figures. Price, $1.75 ; to 
teachers, $1.40 ; by mail, 12 cents extra. 
1. Industrial Education not understood. Probably the only 
man who has wrought out the problem in a practical way is 

^ Samuel G. Love, the superin- 
tendent of the Jamestown (N. 
Y.) schools. Mr. Love has now 
about 2,400 children in the 
primary, advanced, and high 
schools under his charge ; he 
is assisted by fifty teachers, so 
that an admirable opportunity 
was offered. In lb74 (about 
fourteen years ago) Mr. Love 
began his experiment ; gradu- 
ally he introduced one occu- 
pation, and then another, u^itil 
at last nearly all the pupils are 
following some form of educat' 
ing work. 

2. Why it is demanded. The 
reasons for introducing it are 
clearly stated by Mr. Love. It 
was done because the educa" 
tion of the books left the pu. 
pils unfitted to meet the prac. 
tical problems the world asks them to solve. The world does 
not have a field ready for the student in book-lore. The state- 
ments of Mr. Love should be carefully read. 

3. It is an educational hook. Any one can give some 
formal work to girls and boys. What has been needed has 
been some one who could find out what is suited to the little 
child who is in the " First Reader," to the one who is in the 
"Second Reader," and so on. It must be remembered the 
effort is not to make carpenters, and type-setters, and dress- 
makers of boys and girls, but to educate them by these oecupcir 
tions better than without them. 




=LOVE= 



BENl> ALt ORt>ERS TO 

2 E. L. KELLOGG & CO.. NEW YORK & CHICAGO. 

4. It tells the teacher just what to do. Every teacher should 
put some form of Manual Training into his school. At pres- 
ent the only ones are Gymnastics, Writing, and Drawing. 
But there are, it is estimated, more than thirty forms of 
Industrial Work that may be made educative. The teacher 
who studies this book will want to try some of these forms. 
He will find light on the subject. 

5. It must he noted that a demand now exists for men and 
women to give Industrial Training. Those teacliers who are 
wise will begin now to study this important subject. The 
city of New York has decided to introduce it into its schools, 
where 140,000 pupils are gathered. It is a mighty undertak- 
ing, but it will succeed. The people see the need of a differ- 
ent education than that given by the books. Book education 
is faulty, partial, incomplete. But where are the men and 
women to come from who can give instruction ? Those who 
read this book and set to work to introduce its methods into 
their schools will be fitting themselves for higher positions. 

The Lutheran Observer says :— " This voliime on Manual Teaching 
ought to be speedily introduced into all the public schools. It is admir- 
ably adapted for its purpose and we recommend it to teachers every- 
where." 

The Nashville American says :— " This is a practical volume. It 
embodies the results of many years of trial in a search after those 
occupations that will educate in the true sense of the word. It is not a 
work dealing in theories or abstractions, but in methods and details, 
such as will help the teacher or parent selecting occupations for chil- 
dren. ' 

West Virginia School Journal.—" It shows what can be done by a 

resolute and spirited teacher." 
Burlington Free Press.— "An excellent hand book." 
Prln, Sherman Williams, Glens Falls, N. Y.— "I am sure it will 

g:reatly aid the solution of this difficult problem." 

Prof. Edward Brooks, Late Principal Millersburg, (Pa.) Normal 
School,—" It is a much needed work ; is the best book I have seen." 

Supt. S. T. Button, New Haven.— "The book is proof that some 
practical results have been reached and is full of promise for the 
future. 

Supt. John E. Bodley, Minneapolis.—" I know of no one more com- 
petent to tell other superintendents and teachers how to introduce Man- 
ual Training than Prof. Love." 

Oil City Blizzard.—" The system he has marked out must be a good 
one, or he would never have allowed it to go out." 

Buffalo Times.—" Teachers are looking into this subject and this will 
help them," 

""oston Advertiser.— " A plain unvarnished explanation." 

Jamestown, N. Y. Evening Journal.- " In the hands of an intelligent 
teacher cannot fail to yield satisfactory results." 



t^ENt) All. ORfiilRS TO 

E. L. KELLOGG <& CO., NEW YORK <& CHICAGO, 3 

Curries Early Education. 

" The Principles and Practice of Early and Infant School 
Education." By James Currie, A. M., Prin. Church of 
Scotland Training College, Edinburgh. Author of 
*' Common School Education," etc. With an introduction 
by Clarence E. Meleney, A. M., Supt. Schools, Paterson, 
N. J. Bound in blue cloth, gold, 16mo, 290 pp. Price, 
$1.25 ; to teachers, $i oo ; by mail, 8 cents extra. 

WHY THIS BOOK IS VALUABLE. 

1. Pestalozzi gave New England its educational supremacy. 
The Pestalozzian wave struck this country more than forty 

years ago, and produced a mighty shock. It s§t New Eng- 
land to thinking. Horace Mann became eloquent to help on 
the change, and went up and down Massachusetts, urging in 
earnest tones the change proposed by the Swiss educator. 
What gave New England its educational supremacy was its 
reception of Pestalozzi's doctrines. Page, Philbrick, Barnard 
were all his disciples. 

2. It is the work of one of the best expounders of Pes- 
talozzi. 

Forty years ago there was an upheaval in education. Pes- 
talozzi's words were acting like yeast upon educators ; thou- 
sands had been to visit his schools at Yverdun, and on their 
return to their own lands had reported the Wonderful scenes 
they had witnessed. Rev. James Currie comprehended the 
movement, and sought to introduce it. Grasping the ideas of 
this great teacher, he spread them in Scotland ; but that 
country was not elastic and receptive. Still, Mr. Currie's 
presentation of them wrought a great change, and he is to be 
reckoned as the most powerful exponent of the new ideas in 
Scotland. Hence this book, v/hich contains them, must be 
considered as a treasure by the educator. 

3. This volume is really a Manual of Principles of Teaching. 
It exhibits enough of the principles to make the teacher 

intelligent in her practice. Most manuals give details, but no 
foundation principles. Tlie first part lays a psychological 
basis — the only one there is for the teacher ; and this is done 
in a simple and concise way. He declares emphatically that 
teaching cannot be learned empirically. That is, that one can- 
not watch a teacher and see how he does it, and then, imitat- 
ing, claim to be a teacher. The principles must be learned. 

4. It is a Manual of Practice in Teaching. 



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4 B. L. KELLOGG & CO. , NE W YORK <& CHICAGO. 

It discusses the subjects of Number, Object Lessons, Color, 
Form, Geography, Singing, and Reading in a most intelKgent 
manner. There is a world of valuable suggestions here for 
the teacher. 

5. It points out the characteristics of Lesson-Giving — or 
Good Teaching. 

The language of the teacher, the tone of voice, the question- 
ing needed, the sympathy with the class, the cheerfulness 
needed, the patience, the self-possession, the animation, the 
decorum, the discipline, are all discussed. This latter term is 
defined, and it needs to be, for most teachers use it to cover 
all reasons for doing — it is for " discipline" they do every- 
thing. 

6. It discusses the motives to be used in teaching. 

Any one who can throw light here will be listened to ; Mr. 
Currie has done this admirably. He puts (1) Activity, (2) 
Love, (3) Social Relation, as the three main motives. Rewards 
and Punishments, Bribery, etc., are here well treated. The 
author was evidently a man " ahead of his times ;" every- 
where we see the spirit of a humane man ; he is a lover of 
children, a student of childhood, a deep thinker on subjects 
that seem very easy to the pretentious pedagogue. 

7. The book has an admirable introduction, 

By Supt. Meleney, of Paterson, N. J., a disciple of the New 
Education, and one of the most promising of the new style of 
educators that are coming to the front in these days. Taking 
it all together, it is a volume that well deserves wonderful 
popularity. 

Adopted by the Chautauqua Teachers' Reading Union. 

Philadelphia Teacher.—" It is a volume that every primary teacher 
should study." 

Boston Common School Education.—" It will prove a great boon to 
thousands of earnest teachers." 

Virginia Educational Journal.—" Mr. Currie has long been esteemed 
by educators." 

Central School Journal.— " Books like this cannot but hasten the 
flay for a better valuation of childhood." 

North Carolina School Teacher.— "An interesting and timely book." 



FOR READING CIRCLES. 

" Payne's Lectures" is pre-eminently the book for Reading 
Circles. It has already been adopted by the New York, Ohio, 
Philadelphia, New Jersey, Ilhnois, Colorado, and Chautauqua 
Circles, besides many in counties and cities. Remember that 
our edition is far superior to any other published. 



fefiND AtAj ORDERS *d 

R L. KELLOGG & CO., NEW YORK & CHICAGO. 



Shaws Rational Question Book. 

'* The National Question Book." A graded course of study 
for those preparing to teach. By Edward R. Shaw, Prin- 
cipal of the High School, Yonkers, N. Y.; author of 
*' School Devices," etc. Bound in durable English buckram 
cloth, with beautiful side-stamp. 12mo, 350 pp. Price, 
$1.50 ; 7iet to teachers, postpaid. 

This work contains 6,000 Questions and Answers on 22 
Different Branches of Study. 

ITS DISTINGUISHING FEATURES. 

1. It aims to make the teacher a better teacher. 

*' How to Make Teaching a Profession" has challenged the 
attention of the wisest teacher. It is plain that to accomphsh 
this the teacher must pass from the stage of a knowledge of 
the rudiments, to the stage of somewhat extensive acquire- 
ment. There are steps in this movement ; if a teacher will 
take the first and see what the next is, he will probably go on 
to the next, and so on. One of the reasons why there has 
been no movement forward by those who have made this first 
step, is that there was nothing marked out as a second step. 

2. This book will show the teacher how to go forward. 

In the preface the course of 

study usually pursued in our 
best normal schools is given. 
This proposes four grades; 
third, second, first, and profes- 
sional. Then, questions are 
given appropriate for each of 
these grades. Answers follow 
each section. A teacher will 
use the book somewhat as fol- 
lows : — If he is in the tliird 
grade he will put the questions 
found in this book concerning 
numbers, geography, liistory, 
grammar, orthography, and 
theory and practice of teaching 
to himself and get out the 
answer. Having done this he 
will go on to the other grades 
in a similar manner. In this 
way he will know as to his fit- 
ness to pass an examination for 




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6 E. L. KELLOGG & CO., NEW YORK & CHICAGO, 

these grades. The selection of questions is a good one. 

3. It proposes questions concerning teaching itself. 

The need of studying the Art of Teaching is becoming more 
and more apparent. There are questions that will prove very 
suggestive and valuable on the Theory and Practice of Educa- 
tion. 

4. It is a general review of the common school and higher 
studies. 

Each department of questions is followed by department of 
answers on same subject, each question being numbered, and 
answer having corresponding number. 

Arithmetic, 3d graxie. English Literature, Ist grade. 

Geography, 2d and 3d grade. Natural Philosophy, " 

U. S. History, 2d and 3d grade. 
Grammar, 1st, 2d, and 3d grade. 
Orthography and Orthoepy, 3d grade. 
Theory and Practice of Teaching, 

1st, 2d, and 3d grade. 
Rhetoric and Composition, 2d grade. 
Physiology, 1st and 2d grade. 
Bookkeeping, 1st and 2d grade. 
Civil Government, 1st and 2d grade. 
Physical Geography, 1st grade. 

5. It is carefully graded into grades corresponding to those 
into which teachers are usually classed. 

It is important for a teacher to know what are appropriate 
questions to ask a third grade teacher, for example. Exam- 
iners of teachers, too, need to know what are appropriate 
questions. In fact, to put the examination of the teacher into 
a proper system is most important. 

6. Again, this book broadens the field, and will advance 
education. The second grade teacher, for example, is exam- 
ined in rhetoric and composition, physiology, book-keeping, 
and civil government, subjects usually omitted. The teacher 
who follows this book faithfully will become as near as possi- 
ble a normal school graduate. It is really a contribution to 
pedagogic progress. It points out to the teacher a road to 
prof essional fitness. 

7. It is a useful reference work for every teacher and priv- 
ate Ubrary. 

Every teacher needs a book to turn to for questions, for 
example, a history class. Time is precious ; he gives a pupil 
the book saying, " Write five of those questions on the black- 
board ; the class may bring in answers to-morrow." A book, 



Algebra, professional grade. 


General History, profess, grade. 


Geometry, 


* " 


Latin, 


( (( 


Zoology, 


k (( 


Astronomy, 


11 (V 


Botany, 


14 11 


Physics, 


4 44 


Chemistry, 


4 44 


Geology, 


4 44 



&£ni> all oeders *6 
E. L. KELLOGG & CO., NEW YORK & CHICAGO. 7 

made on the broad principles this is, has numerous uses. 

8. Examiners of teachers will find it especially valuable. 
It represents the standard required in New York and the East 
generally for third, second, first, and state diploma grades. 
It will tend to make a imiform standard throughout the 
United States. 

WHAT IS SAID OF IT. 

A Great Help.— "It seems to be well adapted to the purposes lor 
which it is prepared. It will undoubtedly be a great help to many 
teachers who are preparing to pass an examination."— E. A. Gastman, 
Supt. Schools, Decatur, 111. 

Very Suggestive.— " I consider it very suggestive. As a book for 
class-room use it can serve a very important object by this suggestive- 
ness, which is the peculiar quality of the book. Many of the questions 
suggest others to the teacher, and thus open her mind to new aspects of 
the book she is teaching. Such questions aid pupils in looking up mat- 
ter which they have previously acquired, and yet supply the charm of 
novelty."— B. C. Gregory, Secretary of N. J. Reading Circle. 

Helpful to Young Teachers.—" It will prove a helpful book to young 
teachers who wish to review the studies which it treats."— T. M. Bal- 
LIET, Supt, Schools, Springfield, Mass. 

Well Fitted for its Purpose.—" I find it well fitted for its purpose in 
testing the acquaintance of students with the principles that govern the 
several departments of science and their application to special cases. I 
can see how a teacher can make good use of this book in his classes."— 
D. L. KiEHLE, Supt. of Public Instruction, St. Paul, Minn. 

Without a Peer.—" It is without a peer."— J. M. Greenwood, Supt. 
Schools, Kansas City, Mo. 

Best for its Price.-" It is the best book for its price that I ever pur- 
chased,"— Miss Eva Quigley, teacher at La Porte, Cal. 

Best of the Kind.— " It is decidedly the best book of the kind I ever 
examined."— D. G. Williams, Ex-Co. Supt. York County, Pa. 

Will Furnish Valuable Ideas.— "It presents a larger variety than 
usual of solid questions. Will repay very largely all efforts put forth 
by examiners and examined, and lead to better work in the several 
branches. The questions have been carefully studied. They are the 
result of thoughtful experience, and will furnish valuable ideas. "—Chas. 
Jacobus, Supt. Schools, New Brunswick, N. J. 

J. H. Hoose, Prin. of the Cortland (N. T.) Normal School, says :— " It 
will be helpful to those persons who cannot enjoy an attendence upon 
courses of study in some good school." 

Hon. B. G. Northrup, of Connecticut, says : — " It is at once concise 
and comprehensive, sWnu ativg and instructive. These questions seem 
to show the young teacher what he d es not know and ought to know, 
and facilitates the acquisition of the desired knowledge," 

School Education (Minn.) says:— "Many a young teacher of good 
mind, whose opportunities have been meagre, and who does not yet 
know how to study effectively in a scientific spirit, may be stimulated 
to look up points, and to genuine progress in self -improvement by such 
a book as this. The questions are systematically arranged, worded with 
judgment, and are accompanied by numerous analyses of various sub- 
iecte." 



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Taynes Lectures on the Science and 

Art of Education. Reading Circle Edition. By Joseph 
Payne, the first Professor of the Science and Art of Edu- 
cation in the College of Preceptors, London, England. 
With portrait. 16mo, 350 pp., English cloth, with gold 
back stamp. Price, $1.00 ; to teachers, 80 cents ; by mail, 
7 cents extra. Elegant new edition from new plates. 

Teachers who are seeking to 
know the principles of education 
will find them clearly set forth in 
this volume. It must be remem- 
bered that principles are the basis 
upon which all methods of teach- 
ing must be founded. So valu- 
able is this book that if a teacher 
were to decide to own but three 
works on education, this would 
be one of them. This edition 
contains all of Mr. Payne's writ- 
ings that are in any other Ameri- 
can abridged edition, and is the 
only one with his portrait. It is 
far superior to any other edition 
published. 
Joseph Payne. 

WHY THIS EDITION IS THE BEST. 
(1.) The side-titles. These give the contents of tii8 page. 
(2.) The analysis of each lecture, with reference to the educa- 
tional points in it. (3.) The general analysis pointing out the 
three great principles found at the beginning. (4.) The index, 
where, under such heads as Teaching, Education, The Child, 
the important utterances of Mr. Payne are set forth. (5.) 
Its handy shape, large type, fine paper, and press-work and 
tasteful binding. All of these features make this a most val- 
uable book. To obtain all these features in one edition, it 
was found necessary to get out this new edition. 

Ohio Educational Monthly.— "It does not deal with shadowy theories : 
it is intensely practical." 

Philadelphia Educational News.—" Ought to be in library of every 
progressive teacher." 

Educational Courant.— " To know how to teach, more i" needed than 
a knowledg-e of the branches taught. This is especially -vaiuable." 

Pennsylvania Journal of Education —"Will be of practical value to 
Normal Schools and Institutes*" 




&Eia) Aiiii ORDiEBS *d 
E. L. KELLOGG & CO., NEW YORK & CHICAGO. 11 

Shaw and T>onneWs School "Devices. 

** School Devices." A book of ways and suggestions for 
teachers. By Edward R. Shaw and Webb Donnell, of the 
High School at Yonkers, N. Y. Illustrated. Dark-blue 
cloth binding, gold, 16mo, 224 pp. Price, $1.35 ; to teach- 
ers, $1.00 ; by mail, 9 cents extra. 
^r-A BOOK OF "WAYS" FOR TEACHERS.^,^ 
Teaching is an art ; there are *' ways to do it." This book 
is made to point out *' ways," and to help by suggestions. 

1. It gives " ways " for teaching Language, Grammar, Read- 
ing, Spelling, Geography, etc. These are in many cases 
novel ; they are designed to help attract the attention of the 
pupil. 

2. The *' ways" given are not the questionable " ways " so 
often seen practiced in school-rooms, but are in accord with 
the spirit of modem educational ideas. 

3. This book will afford practical assistance to teachers who 
wish to keep their work from degenerating into mere routine. 
It gives them, in convenient form for constant use at the 
desk, a multitude of new ways in which to present old truths. 
The great enemy of the teacher is want of interest. Their 
methods do not attract attention. There is no teaching 
unless there is attention. The teacher is too apt to think 
there is but one "way "of teaching spelling; he thus falls 
into a rut. Now there are many " ways " of teaching spell- 
ing, and some " ways " are better than others. Variety must 
exist in the school-room ; the authors of this volume deserve 
the thanks of the teachers for pointing out methods of obtain- 
ing variety without sacrificing the great end sought — scholar- 
ship. New "ways" induce greater effort, and renewal of 
activity. 

4. The book gives the result of large actual experience in 
the school-room, and will meet the needs of thousands of 
teachers, by placing at their command that for which visits 
to other schools are made, institutes and associations 
attended, viz., new ideas and fresh and forceful ways of 
teaching. The devices given under Drawing and Physiology 
are of an eminently practical nature, and cannot fail to 
invest these subjects with new interest. The attempt has 
been made to present only devices of a practical character. 

5. The book suggests " ways " to make teaching effective ; it 
is not simply a book of new " ways," but of " ways " that wil] 
produce good results. 



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Parkers Talks on Teaching, 

Notes of " lalks on Teaching" given by CoL. Francis W. 
Parker (formerly Superintendent of schools of Quincy, 
Mass.), before the Martha's Vineyard Institute, Summer 
of 1882. Reported by Lelia E. Patridge. Square 16mo, 
5x6 1-2 inches, 192 pp., laid paper, English cloth. Price, 
$1.25 ; fo teachers, |l.00 ; by mail, 9 cents extra. 
The methods of teaching employed in the schools of Quincy, 
Mass., were seen to be the methods of nature. As they were 
copied and explained, they awoke a great desire on the part 
of those who could not visit the schools to know the underly- 
ing principles. In other words. Colonel Parker was asked to 
explain why he had Ms teachers teach thus. In the summer 
of 1882, in response to requests. Colonel Parker gave a course 
of lectures before the Martha's Vineyard Institute, and these 
were reported by JVIiss Patridge, and published in this book. 

The book became famous ; 
more copies were sold of it in 
the same time than of any 
other educational book what- 
ever. The daily papers, which 
usually pass by such books 
with a mere mention, devoted 
columns to reviews of it. 

The following points will 
show why the teacher will 
want this book. 

1. It explains the *' New 
Methods." There is a wide 
gulf between the new and the 
old education. Even school 
boards understand this. 

2. It gives the underlying 
principles of education. For it 

must be remembered that Col. Parker is not expoimding Ms 
methods, but the methods of nature. 

3. It gives the ideas of a man who is evidently an " educa- 
tional genius," a man born to understand and expound educa- 
tion. We have few such ; they are worth everything to the 
human race. 

4. It gives a biography of Col. Parker. This will help the 
teacher of education to comprehend the man and his motives. 

5. It has been adopted bv nearly every State Reading Circle. 




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16 E. L, KELLOGG & CO., NEW YORK & CHICAGO. 

Tatridges " Quincy 0\4ethodsy 

The " Quincy Methods," illustrated ; Pen photographs from 
the Quincy schools. By Lelia E. Patridge. Illustrated 
with a number of engravings, and two colored plates. 
Blue cloth, gilt, 12mo, 686 pp. Price, $1.75 ; to teachers, 
$1.40 ; by mail, 13 cents extra. 
When the schools of Quincy, Mass., became so famous 
under the superintendence of Col. Francis W. Parker, thou- 
sands of teachers visited them. Quincy became a sort of 
" educational Mecca," to the disgust of the routinists, whose 
schools were passed by. Those who went to study the 
methods pursued there were called on to tell what they had 
seen. Miss Patridge was one of those who visited the schools 
of Quincy ; in the Pennsylvania Institutes (many of which 
she conducted), she found the teachers were never tired of 
being told how things were done in Quincy. She revisited 
the schools several times, and wrote down what she saw ; then 
the book was made. 

1. This book presents the actual practice in the schools of 
Quincy. It is composed of *' pen photographs." 

2. It gives abundant reasons for the great stir produced by 
the two words " Quincy Methods." There are reasons for the 
discussion that has been going on among the teachers of late 
years. 

3. It gives an insight to principles underlying real educa- 
tion as distinguished from book learning. 

4. It shows the teacher not only what to do, but gives the 
way in w^hich to do it. 

5. It impresses one with the spirit of the Quincy schools. 

6. It shows the teacher how to create an atmosphere of hap- 
piness, of busy work, and of progress. 

7. It shows the teacher how not to waste her time in worry- 
ing over disorder. 

8. It tells how to treat pupils with courtesy, and get cour- 
tesy back again. 

9. It presents four years of work, considering Number, 
Color, Direction, Dimension, Botany, Minerals, Form, Lan- 
guage, Writing, Pictures, Modelling, Drawing, Singing, 
Geography, Zoology, etc. , etc. 

10. There are 6b6 pages; a large book devoted to the realities 
of school life, in realistic descriptive language. It is plain, 
real, not abstruse and uninteresting. 

11. It gives an insight into real education, the education 
urged by Pestalozzi, Froebel, Mann, Page, Parker, etc. 



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E, L. KELLOGG & CO., NEW YORK & CHICAGO. 17 

12. It exemplifies the teachings of Col. F. W. Parker in the 
" Talks on Teaching." It must be remembered that th« 
"Talks" were from the notes taken by Miss Patridge, the 
author of this book. To understand what the teaching is that 
Col. Parker would have in the schools, one must read this 
book, or attend his school at Normal Park, 111. 

Pa. School Journal :— " The book will be of historical significance." 
N. Y. School Bulletin :— " Should be one of the first dozen books in the 
teacher's library." Boston Journal of Education:— "Affords a clear 
insight into the methods and work at Quincy," Iowa Teacher :— " The 
best of it is that the underlying principles are explained," Chicago 
Practical Teacher :— "Miss Patridge has done her work thoroughly and 
well." N. C. Teacher :— " The story of the Quincy method is well told." 
La. School Journal :— " The work ought to be in every public school 
library." Chicago Intelligence :— " It is really a manual for the prim- 
ary teacher." Teachers' Quarterly :—" Beautifully told in this vol- 
ume." Cincinnati School Journal :— "The book explains the underly- 
ing principles." S. W. Journal of Education :— "Miss Patridge has done 
the work excellently well." Indiana School Bulletin :— " Full of good 
suggestions." Pa. Teacher :— " No teacher can read it without receiv- 
ing ideas and helpful suggestions." Pa. School Journal :—" This book 
has a mission." Nat. (Pa.) Educator :— " Every progressive teacher will 
get more benefit from it than from any other published." Our County 
and Village Schools :—" Reading this volume will produce a revolu- 
tion." Ed. Courant :— " Has the power, fervor, and style of Parker." 
"Wis. Journal of Education :— " By far the most complete manual of the 
'New Education." 111. School Journal:— "It is without question the 
fullest, richest, and most suggestive volume for grade teachers, and 
also for superintendents, that it has been our portion to examine." 
Normal Exponent :— " Every teacher should read it." "W. Va. School 
Journal :— " It is a fountain from which new and refreshing draughts 
may be drawn." Philadelphia Teacher :—" Abounds with hints; will 
prove a precious guide." Chicago Advance :— " In the presence of such 
a book we pause with reverence." School Education :—" Is a very 
desirable book." Phrenological Journal:— "It Is the application of 
principles." Christian Advocate :—" Well worth the perusual of 
teachers." Texas School Journal :— " No primary teacher can afford to 
do without this work." Springfield Republican :— " The earnest teach- 
er wm find it helpful." Quebec Ed. Record :— " Pleased that it is on the 
Ust of books for teachers." The Critic :— " Gives a helpful insight into 
thetheory of Education." Interior :—" Well worthy of study." Inter- 
«oean :— " One of the books that should be found in every teacher's 
desk." Detroit Free Press:— Will take a high place in educational 
literature." S. S. Times :—" First and best for the Sunday school 
teacher is Quincy Methods." 



6BND ALL. OBDBBS TO 

18 E. L. KELLOGG & CO., NEW YORK <& CHICAGO. 

Tates Vhilosophy of Education, 

The Philosophy of Education. By T. Tate. Revised and 
Annotated by E. E. Sheib, Ph.D., Principal of the Louis- 
iana State Normal School. Unique cloth binding, laid 
paper, 831 pp. Price, $1.50 ; to teachers, $1.20 ; by mail, 7 
cents extra. 
There are few books that deal with the Science of Educa- 
tion. This volume is the work of a man who said there were 
great principles at the bottom of the work of the despised 
schoolmaster. It has set many a teacher to thinking, and in 
its new form will set many more. 

Our edition will be found far superior to any other in every 
respect. The annotations of Mr. Sheib are invaluable. The 
more important part of the book are emphasized by leading 
the type. The type is clear, the size convenient, and print- 
ing, paper, and binding are most excellent. 

Mr. Philbrickso long superintendent of the Boston schools hold this 
work in high esteem. 

Col. F. W. Parker strongly recommends it. 

Jos. MacAlister, Supt. Public Schools, Philadelphia, says :— " It is one 
of the first books which a teacher deserves of understanding the scien- 
tific principles on which his work rests should study." 

S. A. Ellis, Supt. of Schools, Rochester N. Y. says :— " As a pointed and 
judicious statement of principles it has no superior." 

Thos. M. Balliet, Supt. of Schools^ Reading. Pa., says :—" The work 
is a classic on Education." 

J. M. Greenwood, Supt. Schools, Kansas City, says :—" I wish every 
teacher of our country owned a copy and would read it carefully and 
thoughtfully." 

Prest. E. A. Sheldon, Oswego Normal Schools, says :— " For more 
than 20 years it has been our text-book in this subject and I know of no 
other book so good for the purpose." 

Bridgeport Standard.—" A new generation of thinkers will welcome 
it ; it has long held the first place in the field of labor which it illus- 
trates." 

S. W» Journal of Education.— "It deals with fundamental principles 
and shows how the best educational practice comes from them." 

The Interior.—" The book has long been held in high esteem by 
thoughtful teachers." 

Popular Educator.—" Has long held a high place among educational 
works." 

Illinois School Journal.— "It abounds in good things." 

Philadelphia Eecord.— " Has been ranked among educational classics 
for more than a quarter of a century." 

Educational News.-" Tate was the first to give us the maxims from 
the ' known to the unknown ' etc." 



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E. L. KELLOGG & CO., NEW YORK & CHICAGO. 19 

Fitclfs Lectures on Teaching. 

Lectures on Teaching. By J. G. Fitch, M.A., one of Her 
Majesty's Inspectors of Schools. England. Cloth, 16mo, 
395 pp. Price, $1.35 ; to teachers, $1.00 ; by mail, postpaid. 

Mr. Fitch takes as his topic the apphcation of principles to 
the art of teaching in schools. Here are nO' vague and gen- 
eral propositions, but on every page we find the problems of 
the school-room discussed with definiteness of mental grip. 
No one who has read a single lecture by this eminent man 
but will desire to read another. The book is full of sugges- 
tions that lead to increased power. 

1. These lectures are highly prized in England. 

2. There is a valuable preface by Thos. Hunter, President 
of N. Y. City Normal College. 

3. The volume has been at once adopted by several State 
Reading Circles. 

EXTRACT FROM AMERICAN PREFACE. 
" Teachers everywhere among- English-speaking peoi)le have hailed 
Mr. Fitch's work as an invaluable aid for almost every kind of instruc- 
tion and school organization. It combines the theoretical and the prac- 
tical ; it is based on psychology ; it gives admirable advice on every- 
thing connected witn teaching— from the furnishing of a school-room 
to the preparation of questions for examination. Its style is singularls' 
clear, vigorous and harmonious." 

Chicago Intelligence.— " All of its discussions are based on sound 
psychological principles and give admirable advice." 

Virginia Educational Journal.—" He tells what he thinks so as to 
be helpful to all who are striving to improve." 

Lynn Evening Item.— " He gives admirable advice." 

FMIadelphia Record.—" It is not easy to imagine a more useful vol- 
ume." 

Wilmington Every Evening.—" The teacher will find in it a wealth 
of help and suggestion." 

Brooklyn Journal.—" His conception of the teacher is a worthy ideal 
for all to bear in mind." 

New England Journal of Education : " This is eminenily the work of 
a man of wisdom and experience. He takes a broad and comprehensive 
view of the work of the teacher, and his suggestions on all topics are 
worthy of the most careful consideration." 

Brooklyn Eagle : " An invaluable aid for almost every kind of in- 
struction and school organization. It combines the theoretical and the 
practical ; it is based on psychology ; it gives admirable advice on every- 
thing connected with teaching, from the furnishing of a school-room to 
the preparation of questions for examination." 

Toledo Blade : " It is safe to say, no teacher can lay claim to being 
well informed who has not read this admirable work. Its appreciation 



a work to be thoroughly read by its members." 



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20 E. L. KELLOGG & CO., NEW YORK <& CHICAGO, 

The "Practical Teacher , 

Writings of Francis W. Parker, Principal of Cook Co. 

Normal School, 111., and other educators, among which is 

Joseph Payne's Visit to German Schools, etc. 188 large 

Svo pages, TKxlO)^ inches. Cloth. Price, $1.50; to 

teaxihers, $1.20; by mail, 14 cents extra. New edition in 

paper cover. Price, 75 cents ; to teachers, 60 cents ; by 

mail, 8 cents extra. 

These articles contain many things that the readers of the 

'* Talks on Teaching" desired light upon. The space occupied 

enabled Col. Parker to state himself at the length needed for 

clearness. There is really here, from his pen (taking out the 

writings of others) a volume of 830 pages, each page about the 

size of those in "Talks on Teaching." 

1. The writings in this volume are mainly those of Col. F. 
W. Parker, Principal of the Cook County Normal School. 

2. Like the " Talks on Teaching " so famous, they deal with 
the principles and practice of teaching. 

3. Those who own the " Talks " will want the further ideas 
from Col. Parker. 

4. There are many things in this volume written in reply to 
inquiries suggested in " Talks." 

5. There is here really 750 pages of the size of those in 
" Talks." " Talks " seUs for $1.00. This for $1.20 and 14 cents 
for postage. 

6. Minute suggestions are made pertaining to Reading, 
Questions, Geography, Numbers, History, Psychology, Peda- 
gogics, Clay Modeling, Form, Color, etc. 

7. Joseph Payne's visit to the German schools is given in 
full ; everything from his pen is valuable. 

8. The whole book has the breeze that is blowing from the 
New Education ideas ; it is filled with Col. Parker's spirit. 

PARTIAL LIST OF CONTENTS- 

Beginnings. Reading— laws and principles ; Ruling Slates ; Number 
and Arithmetic; Geography; Moulding; History; Psychology; Peda- 
gogics ; Examinations ; Elocvition ; Questioning on Pictiires ; on Flow- 
ers ; on Leaves ; Rules in Language ; Answers to questions respecting 
the Spelling-Book ; List of Children's Books on History ; The Child's 
Voice; Ideas before Words; Description of Pictures; Teaching of 1; 
of 2; of 3; of 4; etc.; Form and Color; Breathing Exercises; Paper 
Folding ; Verbatim report of lessons given in Cook Co. Normal School. 
Busy Work ; Answers to Questions in Arithmetic, etc. ; Why teachers 
drag out a monotonous existence : Teaching of language to children ; 
Supplementary Reading— list of books ; Structural Geography ; Letters 
from Germany ; Hand and Eye Training ; Clay Modeling ; List of Edu- 
eational Works ; Joseph Payne's visit to German Schools, etc., etc. 



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E, L. KELLOGG & CO., NEW YORK & CHICAGO. 21 




Tbe Reading Circle Library, 

No. 1 . Allen's Mind Studies for Young Teachers 

By Jerome Allen, Ph.D., 
Associate Editor of the 
School Journal, formerly 
President of the St. Cloud 
( Minn. ) Normal School. 
16mo, large, clear type, 
128 pp. paper cover. Price, 
30 cents ; to teachers, 24 
cents ; by mail, 3 cents 
extra. Limp cloth, 50 
cents ; to teachers, 40 cents; 
by mail, 5 cents extra. 
Special rates for quantU 
ties. Fourth thousand now 
ready. 

This little volume attempts 
to open the subject of Psychol- 
ogy in a plain way, omitting 
what is abstruse and difficult. 
It is written in language easily 
comprehended, and has prac- 
tical illustrations. It will be wanted by teachers. 

1. Some knowledge of Mental Science is indispensible to the 
teacher. He is dealing v/ith Perception, Attention, Judg- 
ment. He ought to know what these mean. 

2. The relation between Teaching and Mind Growth ia 
pointed out ; it is not a dry treatise on Psychology. 

3. It is a work that will aid the teacher in his daily work in 
dealing with mental facts and states. 

Popular Educator.—" The teacher will find in it much information as 
well as incitement to thought." 

Jared Sanford, School Com., Mt. Vernon, N. T.— " From all points of 
view it must prove of great worth to those who read it. To the earnest 
teacher in search of information concerning the principles of Psychol- 
ogy it is to be highly commended." 

Irwin Sliepard, Pres. Normal School, Winona, Minn.—" I am much 
pleased with it. It certainly fills a want. Most teachers need a smaller 
briefer, bud more convenient Manual than has before been issued." 

S. G. Love, Supt. School, N. Y.— "I want to say of it that it is an 
excellent little book. Invaluable ^or building up the young teacher 
in that kind of knowledge indispensable to successful teaching to-day." 

Prof. Edward Brooks.—" The work will be very useful to young 
teachers." 



ELKELLOCC&'CO 
NEWyORKC/CHICACO 




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22 E. L. KELLOGG & CO., NEW YORK & CHICAGO. 

No. 2. Autobiography of Frcebel. 

Materials to Aid a ComprehenBion of the Works of the 
Founder of the Kindergarten. 16mo, large, clear type, 
128 pp. Unique paper cover. Price, 30 cents ; to 
teachers, 24 cents ; by mail, 3 cents extra. Bound in limp 
cloth, 50 cents ; to teachers, 40 cents ; by mail, 5 cents 
extra. 
This little volume will be welcomed by all who want to get 
ft good idea of Froebel and the kindergarten. 

1. The dates connected with 
Frcebel and the kindergarten 
are given, then follows his 
autobiography. To this is 
added Joseph Payne's esti- 
mate and portrayal of Froe- 
bel, as well as a summary of 
Froebel's own views. 

2. In this volume the stu- 
dent of education finds ma- 
terials for constructing, in an 
intelligent manner an estimate 
and comprehension of the kin- 
dergarten. The life of Froebel, 
mainly by his own hand, is 
very helpful. In this we see 
the working of his mind when 
a youth ; he lets us see how 
he felt at being misunder- 
stood, at being called a bad boy, and his pleasure when face 
to face with nature. Gradually we see there was crystallizing 
in him a comprehension of the means that would bring har- 
mony and peace to the minds of young people. 

3. The analysis of the powers of Froebel will be of great 
aid. We see that there was a deep philosophy in this plain 
German man ; he was studying out a plan by which the 
usually wasted years of young children could be made pro- 
ductive. The volume will be of great value not only to every 
kindergartner, but to all who wish to understand the philoso^ 
phy of mental development. 

La. Journal of Education.—" An excellent little work.' 

W. Va. School Journal.—" Will be of great value." 

Educational Courant, Ky.— " Ought to have a very extensive circu- 
lation among the teachers of the country." 

Educational Record, Can.— "Ought to be in the hands of every pro- 
fessional teacher." 




FBIEDBICH FR(EBEL. 



g^Ni) All orders a?0 

E. L Kellogg & co., new york <& Chicago. 2^ 




JAMES L. HUGHES. 



No. 3. Hughes' Mistakes in Teaching. 

By James L. Hughes, Inspec- 
tor of Schools, Toronto,Can. 
ada. Cloth, 16mo, 115 pp. 
Price, 50 cents ; to teach- 
ers, 40 cents; by mail, 5 
cents extra. 
Thousands of copies of the old 
edition have been sold. The 
new edition is worth double the 
old ; the material has been in- 
creased, restated and greatly 
improved. Two new and im- 
portant Chapters have been 
added on " Mistakes in Aims," 
and " Mistakes in Moral Train- 
ing." Mr. Hughes says in his 
preface : "In issuing a revised 
edition of this book it seems 
fitting to acknowledge grate- 
fully the hearty appreciation 
. . ^ , that has been accorded it by 

American teachers. Realizing as I do that its very large sale 
indicates that it has been of service to many of my fellow 
teachers, I have recognized the duty of enlarging and revis- 
mg it so as to make it still more helpful in preventing the 
common mistakes in teaching and training." 

Ninety-Six important mistakes are corrected in this 
book. This is the only edition authorized by the writer. 
The Schoolmaster (England)— "His ideas are clearly presented." 
a+?l^*°?+^°^l?,*^ of Education.-'* Mr. Hughes evidences a thorough 
fn^IJl *he philosophy ot education. We advise every teacher to invlst 
50 cents m the purchase of this useful volume," 

^j^l'W', York School Journal.— " It will help any teacher to read this 

Chicago Educational Weekly.-" Only long experience could fur- 
nish the author so fully with materials- for sound advice." 
gg^e^ate Teacher's Advocate.— "It is the most readable book we have 

Educational Journal of Virginia.—" We know no book that contains 
ao many valuable suggestions.'' 

Ohio Educational Monthly.—" It contains more practical hints than 
any book of its size known tc) us." 

Iowa Central School Journal.—" We know of no book containinc 
more valuable suggestions. ' ' ^vuuaiumg 

Mfew York School Bulletin—" It is sensible and praoticaL" 



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^. L. KELLOGG & CO., NEW YORK & CHICAGO. 



Seeleys Grubes Method of Teaching 

ARITHMETIC. Explained and illustrated. Also the im- 
provements on the method made by the followers of 
Grube in Germany. By Levi Seeley, Ph.D. Cloth, 
176 pp. Price, $1.00; to teachers 80 cents; by mail, 
7 cents extra. 

1. It IS A Philosophical 
Work. — This book has a sound 
philosophical basis. The child 
does not (as most teachers seem 
to think) learn addition, then 
subtraction, then multiplica- 
tion, then division; he learns 
these processes together. Grube 
saw this, and founded his sys- 
tem on this fact. 

2. It Follows Nature's 
Plan. — Grube proceeds to de- 
velop (so to speak) the method 
by which the child actually be- 
comes (if he ever does) ac- 
quainted with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. 
This is not done, as some suj)- 
pose, by writing them on a 
slate. Nature has her method ; 
she begins with things; after 

handling two thmgs in certain ways, the idea of two is ob- 
tained, and so ot other numbers. The chief value of this 
book then corisists in showing what may he termed the way 
nature teaches the child number. 

3. It is Valuable to Primary Teachers.— It begins and 
shows how the child can be tanght 1, then 2, then 3, &c. 
Hence it is a work especially valuable for the primary teacher. 
It gives much space to showing how the nmnbers up to 10 are 
taught ; for if this be correctly done, the pupil will almost 
teach himself the rest. 

4. It Can Be Used in Advanced Grades.— It discusses 
methods of teaching fractions, percentage, etc., so that it is a 
work valuable for all classes of teachers. 

5. It Guides the Teacher's Work. — It shows, for exam- 
ple, what the teacher can appropriately do the first year, what 
the second, the third, and the fourth. More than this, it sug- 
gests work for the teacher she would otherwise omit. 

Taking it altogether, it is the best work on teaching num- 
ber ever published. It is very handsomely printed and bound. 




DR LEVI SjirLET. 



6lPfD ALt. ORfeERS *d 

K L. KELLOGG & CO., NEW YORK & CHICAGO. 20 




m>vm 



Reception Day. 6 ^os, 

A collection of fresh and original dialogues, recitations, 
declamations, and short pieces for practical use in Public 
and Private Schools. Bovmd in handsome, new paper 
cover, 160 pages each, printed on laid paper. Price 30 
cents each ; to teachers, 24 cents ; by mail, 3 cents extra. 

The exercises in these books bear upon education ; have a 
relation to the school-room. 

1. The dialogues, recitations, 
and declamations, gathered in 
this volume being fresh, short, 
easy to be comprehended and 
are well fitted for the average 
scholars of our schools. 

2. They have mainly been 
used by teachers for actual 
school exercises. 

3. They cover a different 
ground from the speeches of 
Demosthenes and Cicero — 
which are unfitted for boys of 
twelve to sixteen years of age. 

4. They have some practical 
interest for those who use 
them. 

5. There is not a vicious 
sentence uttered. In some 
dialogue books profanity is 
found, or disobedience to 
parents encouraged, or lying 



NEW COVER. 

laughed at. Let teachers look out for this. 

6. There is something for the youngest pupils. 

7. '* Memorial Day Exercises " for Bryant, Garfield, Lincoln, 
etc., will be found. 

8. Several Tree Planting exercises are included. 

9. The exercises have relation to the school-room and bear 
upon education. 

10. An important point is the freshness of these pieces. 
Most of them were written expressly for this collection, and 
can be found nowhere else. 

Boston Journal of Education.— "Is of practical value." 
Detroit Free Press.—" Suitable for public and private schools.** 
Western Ed. Journal.— " A series of very good selections." 















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